
Class 
Book _ 


GopYiiehtN 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE CHURCH AND 
COUNTRY LIFE 



REPORT OF CONFERENCE HELD BY THE COM- 
MISSION ON CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE UNDER 
THE AUTHORITY OF THE FEDERAL COUNCIL OF 
CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN AMERICA. COLUMBUS, 
OHIO. DECEMBER 8-10, 1915 



EDITED BY 

PAUL L. VOGT 

Professor of Rural Economics and Sociology, 
Ohio State University 



NEW YORK 

MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT 

OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 

1916 






Copyright. 1916, by 

Missionary Education Movement of the 

United States and Canada 




AY I9i9i6 
©CI.A433050 



CONTENTS 1 

PAOE 

Secretarial Preface v 

Address of Welcome 3 

Frank B. Willis, Governor of Ohio. 
The Problem 6 

Gifford Pinchot, Chairman, Commission on the Church 
and Country Life, Milford, Pennsylvania. 
The Country Church and Community Building . . .11 

Rev. W. F. Richardson, Kansas City, Kansas. 

* The Country Church as a Community Center. . . 21 

Professor Edwin L. Earp, Madison, New Jersey. 
The Overchurching of Rural Communities .... 50 

Rev. Alva W. Taylor, Columbia, Missouri. 
The Social Responsibility of the Church to the Com- 
munity '' . 56 

S. K. Mosiman, Bluffton, Ohio. 
The New Country Church 66 

Rev. Ward Piatt, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

* The Allies of the Country Church 75 

Albert E. Roberts, International Committee, Y.M.C.A., 
New York City. 
The Country Church and the Country Girl ... 86 

Miss Jessie Field, National Y.W.C.A., New York City. 
The Country Church and Rural Activities ... 88 
President W. O. Thompson, Ohio State University. 

Memoirs of a Rural Church 94 

Rev. Hubert C. Herring, Boston, Massachusetts. 

The Larger Benzonia Parish 97 

Rev. Harlow S. Mills, Benzonia, Michigan. 
*The Function, Policy, and Program of the Country 

Church 113 

President Kenyon L. Butterfield, Massachusetts Agri- 
cultural College, Amherst, Massachusetts. 

1 The subjects marked (*) are the titles of reports, in each 
case followed by the name of the chairman of the committee 
presenting the same. In the body of the book the chairmen's 
names are followed by the names of the other members of the 
committees. 



iv CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Country Church 126 

Rev. S. L. Morris, Atlanta, Georgia. 
Organization of the Commission on the Church and 

Country Life 130 

Rev. Warren H. Wilson, New York City. 

* The Training of the Rural Ministry 139 

Dr. George B. Stewart, Auburn, New York. 
Training for the Rural Ministry 153 

Professor V. G. A. Tressler, Springfield, Ohio. 
The Education of the Rural Ministry 164 

Professor W. K. Tate, Nashville, Tennessee. 

* Financing the Country Church 170 

Professor G. Walter Fiske, Oberlin, Ohio. 
The Country Church in the South 191 

Rev. W. H. Mills, Clemson College, South Carolina. 
Social Justice in the Rural Community .... 197 

Rev. Harry F. Ward, Boston, Massachusetts. 
The Crisis of Organized Christianity 204 

Fred B. Smith, New York City. 

* Church Federation and Cooperation 207 

Rev. E. Tallmadge Root, Boston, Massachusetts. 
Cooperation and Religious Education 212 

President W. G. Clippinger, Westerville, Ohio. 
Cooperation and Federation 224 

Rev. John M. Moore, Nashville, Tennessee. 
Land Tenure and the Rural Church 232 

Rev. Henry Wallace, Des Moines, Iowa. 
The Interdependence of Good Farming and Good Preach- 
ing 242 

Rev. George N. Luccock, Oak Park, Illinois. 
The Functions of the Federal Council 256 

Professor Shailer Mathews, President Federal Coun- 
cil of Churches, Chicago, Illinois. 
The Church as a Community Center 259 

Bishop W. F. Anderson, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
The Rural Church as a Vitalizing Agent .... 262 

Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States. 
A Last Word 273 

Gifford Pinchot. 



SECRETARIAL PREFACE 

In the years 1910-1912, under the supervision of 
Research Secretary, the Rev. G. Frederick Wells, the 
Federal Council maintained a " bureau and clearing- 
house of research, information, and promotion, touch- 
ing the various church and country life interests." 
Since 19 13 a special committee, known as the Com- 
mitte on Church and Country Life, has been in charge 
of this work, and an executive has been employed to 
give it his undivided attention. During the past year 
the office of this executive has been in Columbus, 
Ohio. It was the idea of the committee to make 
Ohio largely a clearing-house of information and it 
was thought desirable to be in close contact with the 
rural work in a state which is fairly central and in 
which there is a variety of rural conditions. 

The executive has been of some assistance to those 
interested in the organization for rural church and 
country life in Ohio. In August, 19 14, an organiza- 
tion called the Ohio Rural Life Association was 
formed, including an Advisory Council made up of 
persons who are in close touch with work for the bet- 
terment of country life, while there is a Committee 
on Interchurch Cooperation, consisting of bishops, 
superintendents, and others, representing sixteen 
denominations. A program for constructive work has 



vi SECRETARIAL PREFACE 

been adopted. As soon as the church survey of the 
state should be completed, it was planned that this 
committee should meet for two or three days' session 
to determine the best possible plan of action to im- 
prove the serious rural church conditions disclosed by 
the survey. 

The main work during the year in Ohio has been 
a state- wide survey supplementing the work of 19 12 
and 19 1 3 by the Presbyterian Church and the Ohio 
Rural Life Survey. The attempt has been made to 
ascertain the location and denomination of every rural 
church, its present membership, whether it is gaining 
or losing in membership, and whether it ordinarily has 
a resident pastor, and what part of a minister's 
service it receives. Most of these facts have been 
ascertained for the churches in more than 1,100 out 
of a total of 1,352 rural townships, while the survey 
is well under way in most of the remaining townships. 
The data for 216 townships were taken from the 
work of the Ohio Rural Life Survey, whereas many 
data from nearly 200 additional townships, though 
not the location of the churches, were ascertained 
from the same source. So far as the data have been 
tabulated, they indicate that nearly one fourth of the 
townships of the state, comprising a territory of more 
than 9,000 square miles, are without resident min- 
isters and that a very large proportion of the 
churches in this area are declining in membership; 
that on an average there are nearly four churches in 
each of these townships; that there is a church to 
every 286 persons, while there is one minister to about 



SECRETARIAL PREFACE vii 

800 persons. These persons, however, are divided in 
different communities in such a way that rarely does 
a minister have a community in which he has an 
opportunity for unhampered leadership in community 
betterment. 

The surveys made during the last five or six years 
indicate that conditions may be no better in other 
states. However, there is ground to hope that 
through interdenominational cooperation something 
can be done for improvement. While betterment can 
be brought about only by slow advancement, it is a 
matter of great importance that, even though slow, 
such advancement shall be made. If the Commission 
in cooperation with the people of Ohio and through 
correspondence with persons in other states can learn 
ways and means for the solution of the vital and 
fundamental problem of rural church decline, its 
service should prove one of the most important of 
those rendered by the Federal Council of Churches. 

The demonstration that it is feasible to make a 
state-wide survey is regarded as of some importance. 
If, as anticipated, the survey shall point out ways of 
betterment and the ecclesiastical forces of the state 
shall act successfully upon the suggestions to which 
it may lead, the survey work in Ohio and the program 
of the Committee on Church and Country Life will 
be justified by substantial results. 

The high grade of accomplishment of many coun- 
try pastors in various parts of the United States justi- 
fies expectation that, as the direct result of a propa- 
ganda, a great advance can be made in the work of 



viii SECRETARIAL PREFACE 

country churches generally. The superior work is 
often the result of a new understanding of the country 
life problem and a new vision of the possibilities of 
work in the rural parish. Many a pastor has revo- 
lutionized his work and doubled his effectiveness be- 
cause of information gained through surveys, through 
the literature of the modern country church move- 
ment, or through contact with persons active in the 
movement. It is proposed in the state of Ohio, as a 
chief part of the work for the next year, to make a 
special study of successful work of country churches 
and rural pastors, to publish a description of it in 
bulletins, and to send these to every rural pastor in 
the state and to students in theological seminaries. 
Thus it is hoped out of actual accomplishment, on the 
field itself to create higher ideals and standards for 
rural church work. If this program is carried out in 
all the states, the effect upon country life and on the 
religious life of the nation will be of no small sig- 
nificance. 

It is proposed also to hold an increased number of 
country church institutes in the various counties, and 
where county organizations do not already exist to 
stimulate the formation of County Committees to act 
as coordinating agencies in the readjustment of 
church life. 

Interdenominational organization for country 
church betterment has had an excellent effect upon 
some of the country ministers. It gives an esprit de 
corps to the country ministry, adds courage, and 
increases confidence and respect for country church 



SECRETARIAL PREFACE i x 

work. It has become influential in drawing good men 
into the rural parishes. It increases the zest of the 
country pastors for the peculiar type of work needed 
in the country. A number of young men are now 
entering the ministry with the purpose of devoting 
their lives to work in the country. Pastors in the 
rural districts are refusing calls to city churches. One 
of my correspondents left his position as instructor in 
an agricultural college to become pastor of a country 
church; one country pastor of my acquaintance has 
declined an invitation to become president of a col- 
lege; while one has left a church in a town to devote 
the best years of his life to work in a small country 
parish. 

In December, 19 14, the Executive Committee of the 
Federal Council of Churches at its annual meeting de- 
termined to create a Commission to whose direction its 
rural work should be entrusted. At their meeting on 
December 20th, the members of the Committee on 
Church and Country Life were informed that they 
had been appointed on the new Commission, and the 
necessary steps were taken to secure the nomination 
of other members by the constituent bodies of the 
Federal Council. In order to secure the continuance 
of the work already begun, a Committee of Direction 
was appointed. The work is now under the super- 
vision of this committee. 

With the approval of the Administrative Com- 
mittee of the Federal Council, preparations were made 
for a Conference on Church and Country Life at the 
time of this meeting. Eminent representatives of the 



x SECRETARIAL PREFACE 

different denominations and of civic and moral 
progress accepted invitations to participate. Among 
them was the President of the United States, who 
made a special journey from Washington to Columbus 
in order to be present and make an address. Nothing 
could more signally reveal the importance of the 
church to the well-being of the country than this act 
of the chief executive of the nation, with the added 
emphasis thus given to the principles set forth in his 
address. 

The Committee of Direction prepared a program for 
this Conference, the sessions of which were held dur- 
ing the morning, afternoon, and evening of Decem- 
ber 8, 9, and 10, 191 5, for the most part in the First 
Congregational Church, Columbus, Ohio, Dr. Wash- 
ington Gladden, pastor emeritus, offering the opening 
invocation. Papers carefully written were read and 
discussed, and in the light of the discussion have now 
been revised for publication. The address of the Rev. 
Ralph A. Felton, of New York City, on " The Present 
Condition of the Rural Churches," is not included, as 
no copy was available owing to unavoidable causes. 

The general topics covered are as follows: The 
Country Church as a Community Center; The Allies 
of the Country Church; The Function, Policy, and 
Program of the Country Church; The Training of the 
Rural Ministry; Financing the Country Church; 
Church Federation and Cooperation; The Church and 
Rural Economy; The Rural Church as a Vitalizing 
Agent. 

The full range of material presented at the Con- 



SECRETARIAL PREFACE xi 

ference, with the names of those submitting the re- 
ports and contributing papers and addresses, can be 
seen under Contents, on pages iii, iv. The report on the 
Function, Platform, and Policy of the Country Church 
is particularly worthy of note. The material upon 
which it is based was gathered by correspondence with 
one hundred and fifty persons from various parts of 
the United States who are closely associated with the 
country church and its work. A preliminary digest of 
this material was made by Dr. Wilbert L. Anderson, 
author of The Country Town. The sudden death of 
Dr. Anderson occurred at the completion of this stage 
of the work, but the undertaking was continued by 
Dr. Butterfield and members of the subcommittee 
especially appointed for this purpose, while a 
final revision was made by the Committee on Direc- 
tion. This report and the material upon which it is 
based should become an important factor in Rural 
Church progress. 

It appears from our observation in Ohio that in 
large areas the denominations working independently 
of one another have failed to prevent serious decline 
in the rural churches, and that it is entirely unlikely 
that without interdenominational cooperation the 
churches will be able to overcome the difficulties of 
the situation. If this is true in Ohio, and in other 
states also, the need of interdenominational organ- 
ization is obvious. 

Charles O. Gill. 

Columbus, Ohio, 

April 15, 1916. 



THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME 
Frank B. Willis 

Because of the supreme importance of the welfare 
of the country church to the social conditions of the 
community, not only the people of Ohio but the people 
of the nation everywhere are deeply interested in the 
conference which begins at this hour. Close to the 
source of our national power has been the country 
church, scattered here and there everywhere through- 
out this great land. The movement for its continua- 
tion and preservation and for the increase of its power 
is one of the most favorable signs of this decade. In 
this movement the people of Ohio are very deeply 
interested, and in their behalf it gives me much pleas- 
ure to welcome to the city of Columbus to-day those 
who are to participate in this most important gathering. 

The state of Ohio has always been deeply inter- 
ested in its rural churches. No other factors have 
played a more significant part in the development of 
the history of Ohio, in the making of its splendid man- 
hood and womanhood, than the little churches dotted 
here and there over every county and in almost every 
township. The history of many of the most important 
churches of the state extends back to the time when 
the pioneers, amid great hardships, as one of their first 
achievements, erected a log church and school in the 

3 



4 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

midst of vast wildernesses. The struggle of the fa- 
thers to rear and maintain their church homes, and the 
influence of those church homes upon the development 
of the people of this great state, cannot be estimated. 

One of the most alarming phases of the splendid 
development which has come in the last generation has 
been the decline of interest in the country church. 
The relief from the former isolation of farm life, the 
coming of modern roads with the automobile and its 
various distractions, the near approach to city connec- 
tions, while they have been of inestimable benefit, have 
created for the country church entirely new problems , 
which it has somehow failed adequately to meet. 
Carefully compiled figures seem to show beyond ques- 
tion that the rural churches in Ohio have come upon 
evil times — that they have ceased to grow, that eighty- 
three per cent, have a membership of less than one 
hundred, that one out of every nine country churches 
has been abandoned in recent years, that only one 
third are increasing in membership, and that two thirds 
have either ceased to grow or are dying. It seems 
especially significant to me that the figures show that 
less than forty per cent, of the rural population are 
church members. Such a situation is one that demands 
the concerted and undivided attention of the leaders 
in church thought and action. 

Such a conference as this, therefore, which repre- 
sents the best thought of the country with regard to 
the interests of the rural church, commands the atten- 
tion of every man interested in the welfare of this 
and other states, I am told that this conference is 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME 5 

especially significant because it is the first nation-wide 
assembly of leaders from all churches, and represents 
in particular all rural movements to consider the future 
of country life with particular reference to the church. 
Every state, I am informed, is represented at this 
meeting, and plans are to be formulated for a local 
campaign in each state to federate country churches 
and to eliminate duplication of effort and expense. 
It is exceedingly fortunate that this plan for increased 
effectiveness of the country churches is to be a con- 
certed plan, and that there is such universal interest 
in it. The problems which it has to consider lie at the 
very heart of national morality and accomplishment. 
It would be an evil day for the people of this country 
if those who live on the farms close to the heart of 
nature and of God are to drift further from the former 
enthusiastic and devoted worship of religious ideals. 
This conference could present no greater achievement 
than the adoption of a plan which would bring about 
the former effective influence of the rural church. 

But this cannot be brought about by old methods. 
The day of three and four small churches in a com- 
munity of two or three hundred people is past. The 
times forbid the continuation of sectarian differences 
that agitated and at times disrupted the churches of 
former days. This problem must be approached in 
a broad way. There must be unification of effort; un- 
important sectarian distinctions must be wiped away; 
the overlapping of territory and the maintenance of 
small and weak churches must be abandoned; neigh- 
boring churches of all denominations must work to- 



6 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

gether for the solution of their problems. Social con- 
ditions must be given consideration. It is not enough 
that the church do Sunday work; it must make its ef- 
fectiveness felt in the every-day life of the community. 
These are some of the key-notes for this convention. 
It is not going to be easy to work out these problems, 
and every man interested in the state of Ohio, as well 
as in the nation, should give his vigorous support 
toward reaching a wise solution of the questions to 
be considered at this conference. 

I am indeed glad to give this movement my hearty 
support and to welcome the various members of this 
convention to the city. It is my trust that your con- 
ferences together may result in efforts of widespread 
extent to increase the efficiency of the rural church. 



THE PROBLEM 

Gilford Pinchot 

There can be no permanently sound and vigorous 
life for the nation unless life in the country is vigorous 
and sound. Country life cannot be morally strong, 
physically healthy, attractive in its social opportunities 
and business returns, and generally satisfying and ef- 
ficient unless the country church does its full share 
to make it so. And the country church cannot do its 
part unless it is sound and vigorous itself. The coun- 
try church is one of the great roots from which spring 



THE PROBLEM 7 

national integrity, vitality, and intelligence. Its life 
and power are of nation-wide concern. 

The permanent strength of any civilization is best 
measured by the soundness of life on the land. It was 
the failure of agriculture far more than the decadence 
of the cities that sapped the power of ancient Rome. 
The farmer feeds and clothes us all. From the coun- 
try comes the strong new blood which renews the 
vigor of the towns. The tenacious spiritual ideals of 
the open country constitute our most resisting barrier 
against the growing laxity and luxury of our social 
organization. It is the country church rather than the 
city church which is in fact our best defense against 
the advance of the evils of our time. 

The country church can be made again what it was 
during the early days in New England, the strongest 
power not only for righteousness, which it is now, but 
also for the general success of country life and for 
the welfare of country communities. I believe that we 
are standing to-day on the threshold of a great move- 
ment which will bring back to the church in the open 
country and in the smaller towns the greater power 
for good which it used to have, and so will lead, both 
spiritually and materially, to a new and better country 
life. The country church can and should be the first 
and strongest of all agencies in furthering the advance 
of rural civilization. 

The object of our conference is to strengthen the 
country church. We are here to consider its present 
and its future, the functions it should perform, the pol- 
icy it should follow, the training of its leaders, the best 



8 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

ways to organize and support it. We shall discuss the 
performance of its spiritual task, its relation to the 
rural communities from which it draws its strength, 
and its influence toward a right solution of the social 
and industrial problems of rural life. In a word, we 
are here to ascertain how best the country church can 
help to bring about better farming, better business, and 
better life, including religion, in the country. Nothing 
that touches for good or evil the life of the country 
people can be alien to the country church. 

We are here also to call the attention of the Chris- 
tian people of the United States to the existence of 
the country church problem, and to ask them to con- 
sider with us the needs of the country church, to find 
out how best to meet these needs, how to strengthen 
and vitalize, and, above all, how to fit the country 
church for the actual modern task with which it is face 
to face. 

This conference, called by the Commission on 
Church and Country Life of the Federal Council of 
Churches, is the result, not merely of the work of the 
Commission, but also of the far larger work, both in 
amount and time, which preceded the creation of the 
Commission, one year ago. It may be said to trace its 
origin in part to the Roosevelt Commission on Country 
Life, in part to the admirable work of the Presbyterian 
Church acting through Dr. Warren H. Wilson, in 
part to that of Dr. George Frederick W r ells for 
the Federal Council of Churches, and especially to 
the epoch-making investigations by the present Secre- 
tary of the Commission, the Rev. Charles Otis Gill, of 



THE PROBLEM 9 

the conditions and needs of the country church in parts 
of Vermont and New York, and to the continuance of 
these investigations in Ohio. But these are far from 
being all. Our obligation is great to progressive coun- 
try ministers and ecclesiastical superintendents; to the 
Men and Religion Movement in the Methodist Church 
and among the Disciples of Christ and the Baptists of 
New York and elsewhere; to the work of the Home 
Missions Council; to the social service work of the 
Moravians and the Christians; to the Country Young 
Men's Christian Association; and to the work of 
others whom I have not named. 

We are not here to advocate the weakening or the 
strengthening of any denomination at the expense of 
any other, nor have we any theory to exploit or ax to 
grind. We merely seek the truth about conditions, and 
remedies that are both wise and practicable. We have 
come together as representatives of every phase of 
country life to consider and discuss cooperation for 
the common welfare of religious work in the country, 
and for the general good of the individuals and the 
communities which the church exists to serve. We 
desire the prosperity of the country church, not only 
for the sake of the church itself, but also for what 
that prosperity can be made to accomplish for the ad- 
vancement of every good cause in the country. 

Under modern conditions the spiritual welfare and 
progress attainable by any community are directly af- 
fected by its material prosperity. Without a reason- 
able economic margin there is seldom an efficient organ- 
ized religious life. Good farms often mean good 



io THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

churches, and poor farms almost always mean weak- 
ness and inefficiency in the country church. Where 
the means for the support of the church are lacking, 
its spiritual efficiency may be directly in question. For 
its own sake the country church is deeply interested in 
the economic success of its people. It is still more 
deeply interested for the sake of the people themselves. 

The problems which confront us can no more be 
solved by the individual country church, or by the 
country churches of any one denomination, than the 
problems of rural life can be solved by the owner of 
any one farm, or the farmers of any one state. In 
this as in all other undertakings among men union is 
strength. We work to best advantage when we work 
together. 

If cooperation among country churches for the gen- 
eral welfare of the work is sound and wise, and if 
cooperation among farmers will lead to a stronger and 
richer spiritual, mental, and physical life on the farm, 
then the country church as a whole is interested in co- 
operation among farmers. I do not contend that the 
church should take the functions of the grange or of 
the agricultural school, but I do believe that the fre- 
quent failure of the country churches through their 
ministers to get into productive touch with the work 
and the needs of the country people is one of the funda- 
mental reasons for the present weakness of the country 
church. 

The movement we are met to further is sound and 
practical in its purpose, and deeply needed. The work 
which lies before the country church may well be sec- 



THE CHURCH AND COMMUNITY BUILDING u 

ond to no other in the power of its thrust toward a 
social order founded on the ethics of Jesus Christ. 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH AND COM- 
MUNITY BUILDING 

W. F. Richardson 

In the creed known as the Thirty-nine Articles, the 
church is defined as follows : " The visible Church of 
Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which 
the pure Word of God is preached, and the sacraments 
duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance, in 
all those things that of necessity are requisite to the 
same." Accurate as this definition may be, as far as 
it goes, it is not complete without some such addition 
as, " and by which the work of Jesus Christ in and for 
the world is being done." The faithful men who com- 
pose the Church of Christ must not only hear the Word, 
and observe the sacraments, but bring the life of their 
Lord to bear upon the world, and more especially upon 
the immediate community for which they are most 
largely responsible. The community does not exist 
for the church, but the church for the community. 
Like her Lord, the church exists in the world, not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give up her 
life for the ransoming of men. The great church is 
the church that most effectively serves men. 

A community is " a group of people living together," 



12 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

whether in city, village, or country. The church in, 
such a community must be directly interested in all the 
life of all the people who make up its population. 
Their homes, their occupations, their schools, their 
habits of life, their ideals of character, all must be the 
concern of the church. May it not be that much of 
the decadence of the country church is due to its neg- 
lect of this divine law, and its effort to build itself up 
at the expense of the community, instead of building 
up the community at the cost of its own sacrificial 
service ? 

What is the present status of the country church? 
A few suggestive facts may be cited, as a partial an- 
swer. A few days ago an Associated Press dispatch 
announced briefly some results of a survey by the com- 
mission under whose auspices we are met to-day. A 
study of rural church life in the state of Ohio led to 
their report, that one in nine of the country churches 
of this state had been abandoned during the past few 
years; that only one in three of the remainder was 
increasing in membership ; and that two thirds of them 
had ceased growing or were slowly dying. The Pres- 
byterian Church has recently conducted a similar sur- 
vey, within several states, from Pennsylvania to 
Missouri, through their Department of Church and 
Country Life. This has led them to like results. In the 
prosperous state of Iowa the rural churches of one dis- 
trict reported a decrease in membership, in contribu- 
tions, in resources, and in value of church buildings, 
and an increase of debt, all in the same year. The 
Disciples of Christ, a religious body which is distinctly 



THE CHURCH AND COMMUNITY BUILDING 13 

rural in its predominant membership, is facing a 
critical situation in its country churches. Seventy-five 
per cent, of its congregations and over forty per cent, 
of its membership are in these scattered churches. A 
large proportion of these churches have preaching but 
once a month, and their activities are often limited to 
the occasion of this monthly visit and the Sunday wor- 
ship of that one day. The total annual budget of these 
" quarter time " congregations averages but $250, of 
which amount $150 is paid to the preacher, $37.50 is 
spent for a revival meeting, $25 is expended upon the 
Sunday-school, $20 goes for incidentals, and $17.50 is 
contributed to missions and benevolences. In view 
of these figures, it is plain to be seen that such churches 
are not building up their communities to any con- 
siderable extent nor even themselves making any 
perceptible growth. 

Too many country churches have no larger ideal 
than to maintain Sunday services, more or less regu- 
larly, and a Sunday-school that closes during the winter 
months, and to have an annual revival meeting. Its 
ministry to the social, or neighborhood, life is seldom 
more than an occasional basket dinner or picnic, a 
possible social or two in the winter, perhaps a sewing 
society for the women and a mission band for the 
younger children, — and a constant watch over the 
young people, to prevent their enjoyment of those 
" worldly amusements " toward which the church holds 
the unvarying attitude of hostility, and in the discus- 
sion of which they are wont to condense the decalogue 
of moral principles into the monologue of " Don't." 



14 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

What more than they are doing may the country 
churches do for their several communities ? 

First, there should be constant and sympathetic co- 
operation between city and country churches. The oft- 
occurring jealousy with which the country church re- 
gards the city church, which is sometimes met by the 
ill-concealed contempt of the latter for the former, is 
as unfortunate as it is unholy. The city church is 
swiftly becoming an expert in certain forms of com- 
munity service, from which the rural churches might 
well learn something of how to do their task. While 
the environment is entirely different, the human nature 
with which each has to deal is exactly the same. Then, 
too, the country is constantly contributing to the young 
and aggressive life of the city, into which flows a 
steady stream that by its very volume threatens to 
make the current of urban life a destructive torrent. 
Ninety per cent, of the ministers and missionaries of 
the church come from rural and village communities. 
And it is a fact well known among social workers that 
many of the young men and women who come from 
the farms into the city help to fill the ranks of those 
who fall victims to the evil forces of our modern so- 
ciety. If every boy and girl from the farm and coun- 
try hamlet were accompanied by a letter from the rural 
church to the city church with which it is in regular 
correspondence, it would save many a life to the vir- 
tues of the home and the kingdom of heaven. 

The country church must study its local environ- 
ment with the view of adapting its ministry thereto. 
The Salt River Presbytery in Missouri, a rural pres- 



THE CHURCH AXD COMMUNITY BUILDING 15 

bytery, finding that it had during the last ten years lost 
twenty per cent, in membership, adopted the following 
recommendation : " We recommend that the churches 
concern themselves with the farmer's road to the near- 
est village, as well as his road to Glory Land. We 
recommend that they concern themselves with the task 
of promoting cooperative business among the farmers. 
We recommend that they help in the war against dis- 
ease. And, wherever there is such need, we recom- 
mend that they make provision for the social life of 
their people and provide wholesome recreation." Is 
there a single item in this statement that does not 
concern the church of the country district? Good 
roads are as essential to the requirements of religious 
worship and social brotherhood as to the profits of the 
field and orchard. Cooperation of the farmers in their 
business life will directly minister to their spirit of 
social fellowship. Their united war against disease 
will teach them new values in the life that now is and 
certainly detract nothing from the value of that which 
is to come. 

The country church must provide for the social life 
of the community. Rowdyism and immorality among 
the young are due to misdirected energy. Young life 
will not be inactive. The school and church are the 
two natural social centers, and the church ought to feel 
the double compulsion of human want and divine love. 
To neglect the young is to invite their contempt for 
the church. A study of ninety-one rural churches in 
Indiana showed that twenty-five of them had not one 
male communicant under twenty-one. In Illinois, only 



16 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

thirteen per cent, of the young people were found at- 
tending the Sunday-school. In Maryland, fifty-seven 
per cent, of the rural churches have no sort of organ- 
ization for the young people of their communities^) In 
the cities, the Young Men's Christian Association and 
Young Women's Christian Association contribute their 
splendid ministries to young life; but there is just 
where the churches are themselves doing most to meet 
this demand. In the country little chance is given for 
such unsectarian service, because the churches are too 
feeble to undertake the work alone, and have too much 
of the sectarian spirit to attempt to do it together. 
Why should not the country churches unite to do such 
work in an effective way ? Then they could have their 
baseball clubs, Scout bands, debating societies, stere- 
opticon lectures, lyceum courses, and, everywhere, na- 
ture study, that noblest pathway of all in which to lead 
the young mind and heart up to a knowledge of and 
love for the Creator and Father of all. If there could 
be an elimination of some of the superfluous church 
organizations in the rural districts, it would help to 
attain this end. In the heart of Missouri, in one of 
its richest counties, there are sixty-seven country 
churches, or one for every forty-six farm families. 
One fourth as many would be ample to meet the needs 
of the county. There is but one resident pastor among 
the sixty-seven churches. Many of them are minis- 
tered to by preachers who travel weary miles to bring 
them the monthly sermons upon which they try to live 
their feeble lives. Cooperation and consolidation or 
lingering decay and final death must be the result of 



THE CHURCH AND COMMUNITY BUILDING 17 

such conditions. These churches must cease to be 
rivals and become partners, or God will smite them 
with barrenness and death. In many cities the people 
are drawing more closely together in their social and 
community life. Witness the community Christmas 
trees in Washington City, New York, Houghton, 
Michigan, and other larger and smaller communities. 
With ringing of the church bells and the singing of 
Christmas carols by chorus choirs, in which the hosts 
that crowd the streets join lustily, the birthday of our 
Lord is ushered in, and the brotherhood of men is made 
a blessed fact of consciousness to thousands of human 
hearts. Why should not this become the universal 
practise among the churches that minister to the scat- 
tered brothers and sisters in our Father's family? 

That such ministry to the community on the part of 
the country church is not an " irridescent dream " is 
shown by many encouraging facts. The country 
churches are waking to their opportunity and duty, 
and in many quarters there is fruitful activity in the 
direction of social betterment. In a general way it 
may be said that in many cases where abandoned coun- 
try churches draw forth the unfavorable comment of 
the passer-by, investigation shows that the old building 
has been left for a new and better one, adapted to 
modern methods of church activity, and put to gen- 
erous use for service to all around it. With the 
growth in wealth and increasing thrift in many rural 
districts, the farmers drive their carriages and auto- 
mobiles into the adjacent towns, where their children 
attend the high school, and their families are enabled 



18 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

to enjoy the ministry of abler preachers than they 
were permitted to hear in the old country meeting- 
houses. To quote the language of the editor of a great 
religious weekly, written to a friend : " What I told 
you even two years ago would not be true to-day. 
The tide has turned, and religion has taken a fresh 
grip on the country, where it seemed about to let go." 

Let us come to specific instances, of which there are 
not a few. In the rural village of Maroa, Macon 
County, Illinois, the Presbyterian Church has a gym- 
nasium, free baths, and a public reading-room; con- 
ducts a cooking class for girls and women; makes 
regular use of a stereopticon and moving-picture ma- 
chine; and has given its basement story to the school 
authorities to relieve the pressure on the public schools 
of the surrounding district. This is a fine specimen of 
community building. 

At Yancey, in the western Blue Ridge district of 
Virginia, was a rural mission church to which there 
came, in 1905, a young and ardent home missionary, 
the Rev. Mr. Ellis. He found a community steeped 
in ignorance and cursed by wretched poverty. Their 
homes were poor and unsanitary, their fields half- 
cultivated, their children growing up without educa- 
tion or moral and spiritual training. One small school- 
room, where an average of fifteen children listlessly 
studied for but five months out of the year, was the 
only chance for education afforded by the community. 
He opened a school in the church building he erected, 
making it a social center to which all the people were 
made welcome. Soon there were from eighty to ninety 



THE CHURCH AND COMMUNITY BUILDING 19 

pupils, who sought to prolong the brief term of study 
by several months. He raised money to build a mod- 
ern three-room schoolhouse and hitched it up with the 
public school system of the state. This school is now 
graded from the kindergarten through the eighth 
grade, employing five competent teachers. He estab- 
lished sewing classes for mothers and daughters, and 
their calico wrappers and sunbonnets are now replaced 
with better and more attractive garments. Under- 
clothing was unknown among the people until his 
school began making such garments for the children, 
to their universal delight and comfort. The first un- 
dergarments the mothers saw they looked upon with 
amazement, asking, " What are they for? " By cook- 
ing classes the mothers have been instructed in the 
preparation of palatable and nourishing food to take 
the place of the former universal diet of greasy pork 
and corn pone. Homes and public buildings have been 
put in sanitary condition, and noticeable improvement 
in the health of the entire community has resulted. In 
a neighboring district an Episcopal Church sustains an 
emergency hospital, where lives are often saved by 
reason of its accessibility in cases of accident or sudden 
illness. It needs no saying that the comforts of the 
homes have been greatly increased; carpets, stoves, 
and other common necessities, once unknown, are 
found almost everywhere. Like transformations are 
being wrought in many neighborhoods, in sundry states 
of our Union. These will suffice as examples of what 
is possible in community building, to the country 
church that is conscious of and faithful to its mission. 



20 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

In closing, let me say that, in my judgment, the solu- 
tion of this problem waits upon the provision of an 
adequate pastoral care for the country church. 
And this depends upon an adequate education of 
a ministry for the rural field. It is not neces- 
sary that the country pastor should be a specialist 
in agriculture or in stock-raising. But he must 
know something of the elements that enter into 
the daily life and toil of his parishioners, he must be 
familiar with such sociological principles as enter into 
community life, and he must have a heart full of sym- 
pathy with and interest in the children of the soil. 
Prof. Alva W. Taylor, of the Missouri Bible College, 
in his " Bulletin No. i of the Commission of Social 
Service and the Rural Church, of the Disciples of 
Christ," says : " The ultimate hope of the rural church, 
as of every church, and of the school, and of every 
other public institution, is in an educated leadership. 
. . . The first requisite lies in the seminary and col- 
lege that trains the ministry. The pastor needs a 
knowledge of the field as well as of the things he is 
to preach. . . . If we are to have an educated rural 
ministry, we must have an education for the rural 
ministry; that means a curriculum that gives the 
knowledge of sociology and of rural life, as well as 
of theology and sermonizing." It is well that certain 
of our educational institutions are turning their atten- 
tion toward the supplying of this need. Every such 
institution that devotes special attention to the train- 
ing of the gospel ministry ought to endeavor to lend 
a hand in fitting our country churches better to fulfil 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 21 

their task of building up the communities where the 
Lord of the church has planted them. 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY 
CENTER 

{Report of Committee) 

Edwin L. Earp, Chairman, Edmund de S. Brun- 
ner, Fred Eastman, C. J. Galpin, A. R. Mann, 
Anna B. Taft. 

The subject of this report, as we understand it, 
refers to the church in the rural community, or it may 
imply the task of the country church in creating a com- 
munity where there is none, or the task of giving 
Christian leadership to a community already socially 
conscious, but in danger, as in some cases, of becoming 
pagan unless the church fulfils its function. 

Clarence Poe says, " The chief task of the rural re- 
former to-day is the creation of the rural community." 
Mr. George W. Russell, in The Irish Homestead, says, 
" The difficulty of moving the countryman, which has 
become traditional, is not due to the fact that he lives 
in the country, but to the fact that he lives in an unor- 
ganized society." Why are we focusing our attention 
to-day upon the rural life of the nation? Because it 
not only includes over one half (fifty-three per cent.) 
of the population of this country, but it also represents 



22 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

the great resource field of the nation's wealth. It is 
here also we discover such splendid heroic individ- 
uality as has produced the largest percentage of moral, 
religious, industrial, and political leadership of all the 
ages, and yet at the same time we discover national 
waste of resources, natural, human, and spiritual, be- 
cause here we find the least of community interest and 
cooperation. 

Why are we discussing so often in these days the 
problems of the country church? Because in many 
sections of our country it presents to us one of the 
most difficult mission fields of the world to cultivate 
because, like the slums of the great cities, it is a lost 
home field. As one goes back to his home county in 
the rural sections of the eastern, southern, and some 
of the middle western states, what does he discover? 
The splendid old circuit system broken up and the 
fires of religious fervor gone out upon many abandoned 
church and family altars, and the message of the min- 
ister in the neglected pulpit of the dilapidated church 
building about as effective in creating a community 
spirit as the noise of a lone woodpecker on a dead tree 
in a swamp. Why is this so ? Because of population 
change through population movement, while there has 
been little if any change in the methods of church 
work to meet the changing needs of these localities. 
The country church of the pioneer period selected 
methods and men to meet the needs of that time. The 
country church of to-day will succeed when it adopts 
this policy. Then the preacher was a moving tie; 
to-day he must be the central cell of a new social 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 23 

nucleus. The circuit system in most rural communi- 
ties has ceased to be effective as it was then. The 
meeting-house (may we preserve the idea if not the 
name) is still essential; but it must be more than a 
meeting-place — it must become the center for the or- 
ganized expression of the whole community life. The 
circuit rider was a heroic and necessary social agent 
then; he is so no longer. To-day we need a new heroic 
type of country preacher who has the courage to stay 
camped in one community until by religious instruc- 
tion and social service he has, like John Frederick 
Oberlin, built up in one whole sweep of country a 
new rural civilization in which the character of Christ 
is the badge of good citizenship. 

The country preacher of to-day confronting his 
task, hard as it may seem, must have the vision of his 
church as a community center and the sense of per- 
sonal responsibility as to his work as the prophet 
Isaiah had in reference to the religious center of a 
rural folk living in a territory no larger than the state 
of New Jersey : " For Zion's sake will I not hold my 
peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until 
her righteousness go forth as brightness, and her sal- 
vation as a lamp that burnetii " (Isa. lxii. 1). Here 
we get the conception that the church is an attractive 
force and a saving agency in the community in which 
the man of God most profitably can invest his whole 
life. 

We wish to present as briefly as possible (1) The 
Community Church as it should be, (2) The Social 
Center Parish Plan, (3) Some encouraging examples 



24 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

of Community Serving Churches, (4) Recommenda- 
tions, (5) References to Literature on the subject. 

I. The Church in the Community 

Keep in mind the declaration of the prophet given 
above. The church in the first place should stand as 
an attractive force in the community. Its building and 
equipment, its organization, its policy, the things for 
which it stands, its ideals for membership and work 
should all be arranged with the view of attracting the 
people of the community, " Until her righteousness 
go forth as brightness." 

The greatest peril the church of the present has to 
face in the community is not the hostility of the people, 
but their indifference; the peril of unattractiveness to 
those who need her fellowship — the peril of being let 
alone by the multitudes. The building should be so 
constructed as to attract the people. The work should 
be so organized as to render service to the entire com- 
munity. If there should exist any form of unright- 
eousness in the community, the church should be so 
organized as to create a public opinion that will hit it 
hard, remove the evil, and establish righteousness. 

Her policy should not be that of a class-conscious 
group, but rather that of the community spirit which 
stands for social justice. The community church must 
have an ideal that should be more attractive at least 
than the platform of any political party, or social or- 
ganization, or socialistic program. 

In the second place the church should be a saving 
agency, an active power in the community. (Until 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 25 

her salvation go forth as a lamp that burneth.) This, 
of course, involves what the church proposes to do in 
the community. 

Its first task should be the endeavor to reconcile the 
erring souls to God through the person and work of 
Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, but more and more 
in our time should the church perform her teaching 
function by acquainting the children at the earliest 
possible moment with Jesus Christ their Savior. This 
can be done by the well-organized Sunday-school, and 
by special emphasis upon parental obligation in the 
home. Later, when we get over the selfishness of 
sectarianism, we shall be able to organize adequately 
for religious instruction in connection with the public 
school system. 

The church should become a saving agency also by 
organizing the recreational and play life of the people. 
It should stand for wholesome and clean amusement 
halls and the organized playground for school and 
community at large. 

The church should seek to give a religious signifi- 
cance to all the legitimate forms of social service in 
the community by furnishing intelligent Christian 
leadership; for example, in the work of the depart- 
ment of public health, the enforcement of welfare 
legislation, the prosecution of the procurer in vice, and 
in the support of all good means for the betterment 
of the life of the wage-earner, and the men and women 
in public employment. 

In fact the time has come when the church can no 
longer maintain its self-respect unless it burns as a 



26 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

lamp of righteousness in making quick the public 
conscience with regard to human rights and social 
justice. 

If we are ever to have the rule of Christ in human 
society — which means the kingdom of God on earth — 
we must have every man and woman doing the 
necessary and legitimate work of the world with the 
consciousness that it is a part of the work of the 
kingdom. This was Paul's ideal when he said, " What- 
soever ye do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." 
The church-members who have helped to formulate 
the program of the church for the community must 
stand together for action that will count in making 
the work of the church real in the community. 

In the well-organized community church it is no 
longer possible for the membership to stand idle in the 
market-place of Christian work and say, " No man 
hath hired us," for there is some form of activity in 
the church's program in which every member can take 
an active part; and, besides, we are still left that broad 
range of individual initiative to keep ourselves active 
in doing the work of the kingdom so that we will be 
without excuse. 

The time has gone by when enlightened people are 
going to be satisfied merely with church buildings and 
programs. When Jesus announced his great social 
program from a pulpit in Capernaum, the people said, 
" What gracious words proceed from his mouth ! " 
But Jesus said, " To-day hath this scripture been ful- 
filled in your ears." We are not to stop there : we must 
so speak and act — the church of the community must 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 27 

so organize its forces and work that the people will be 
compelled to say, " To-day is Christ's program being 
carried out in our community." 

INDIVIDUAL VIEWS OF THE CHURCH AS A 
COMMUNITY CENTER 

Anna B. Taft 

The first element in the church as a community 
center is that its service should be to the whole com- 
munity : the translating of the gospel to the neighbor- 
hood through its members and organizations. It can 
attain this end best by ministering, as our Lord min- 
istered, to those in danger in the community, by the 
saving of whom the prosperity and wholesomeness of 
the community are assured. These are usually the 
young people, newcomers, the poor, the defective, and 
the sick. For the young, the church should recognize 
and minister to the natural social and religious in- 
stinct of the boys and girls; supply them with whole- 
some forms of recreation through organized play, 
clubs, and socials of various kinds ; and provide oppor- 
tunities for religious education and worship. 

For newcomers, the church should provide such 
fostering care and welcome that they soon may become 
residents having a part and interest in upbuilding the 
kingdom in the community. 

For the poor, she should offer such ministry in the 
community that actual cases of want may be met by 
the church and should establish such a neighborhood 
life that poverty will be abolished, and the gospel of a 
just economic condition will be established. 



28 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

For the sick and defective, she should furnish such 
care as isolated cases demand and conduct such a cam- 
paign for public health as shall abolish illness, as far 
as possible, from the community. 

In the open country and small village the numerous 
religious and welfare organizations of the city and 
large town are unnecessary and impracticable. The 
church can be the community center. Where there 
is more than one church, they should work together 
for the common good of the community, but when this 
is impossible, each church should make its service con- 
tribute to the welfare of the community as a whole. 

A. R. Mann 

Every church is a community center in some degree, 
for the fact that it represents a group interest consti- 
tutes it a center around which persons sharing this 
interest in sufficient degree group themselves. It 
seems to me that this constitutes the basis on which 
its influence as a community center is to be extended. 
Only in so far as persons in the community can be 
brought to share in this interest will the church be a 
group center for them. The church must begin, there- 
fore, by thoroughly leavening its present group, and 
by gradual accretion extend its circle of influence. 

The gradual working out of a consistent program 
from within will, I believe, accomplish both more ef- 
fective and more permanent results than any grand- 
stand plan or assumption of community leadership. 
Viewing the situation from this standpoint will aid 
also in determining the possible limits to which the 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 29 

church can become a center, by revealing at once cer- 
tain groups or interests that cannot reasonably be ex- 
pected to be brought into the circle of interest about a 
given Protestant church under our present organiza- 
tion. The larger community of interest cannot be as- 
sumed; it must be fostered and often created. The 
church has a particularly vulnerable point of approach 
because it has an appeal to the emotional and senti- 
mental nature of man, through which the higher spirit- 
ual nature may be aroused. 

In order that a church may become a community 
center in any large way it must engage a ministry 
capable of discovering the community interests and 
tendencies in their pure form, of ascertaining the pur- 
poses for which men come together in the community, 
and how the church can intelligently cooperate in the 
furthering of those interests so far as they are legiti- 
mate. A thorough and appreciative understanding of 
the interests that move the community is a first step, 
and the necessary foundation of any progress. Only 
thus can the church know what activities it should im- 
mediately promote or what it should leave to other 
agencies. 

Many churches will have to be content with being 
a community center. Some, under special favorable 
circumstances, can attain unto the community center. 
There should be caution not to seek self-aggrandize- 
ment at the expense of the highest welfare of the com- 
munity or other existing interests, A church that un- 
dermines another legitimate institution to promote its 
own needs is likely to fail in the effort. The church 



30 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

should be viewed as a means, not as an end in itself. 
Many a church has gone on the rocks through making 
itself an end rather than a means. It can attain its 
highest service side by side with other legitimate 
interests. 

Community center means not, as many have thought, 
the bringing of everything into the church, but rather 
spreading the influence of the church out into the com- 
munity and into everything affecting men's lives. The 
" bringing in " idea tends to make the church an end 
in itself. The " bringing in " will be an inevitable 
result of spending itself in service. 

A church that is to be a center must consent to a 
wider and freer use of its plant than is often the case. 
An over-restrictive policy here is hurtful to the ven- 
ture. Frequently the parsonage can supplement the 
church in this respect; the parsonage contributes much 
to the social center at the church, and we must con- 
ceive of the parsonage in a larger way. The human 
touch is here, and persons respond freely to the human 
element. For some purposes the parsonage can be 
made very much less impersonal than the church build- 
ing. The houses of members are a close second to 
the parsonage. The best center is where persons live. 
The church can multiply its centrality through an in- 
telligent use of its constituent homes. To many per- 
sons the church building is too impersonal. By advo- 
cating such use I do not mean to lessen the wider use 
of the church plant, but to supplement it. 

A center must have continuity. No success follows 
centers with short pastorates. The possibility of being 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 31 

a center is directly proportional to the length of pas- 
torates. Hence, also, arises the importance of mem- 
bers' homes in helping to carry over changes in 
pastorates. 

The church should seek to set forward the larger 
influences that will tie a community into a real group 
and thus aid in a complete community socialization. 
What these influences are will have to be determined 
for each locality. Federation of local forces for com- 
munity building will often be a needed task. 

Edmund de S. Brunner 

The church is a part of the community and as such 
depends upon it for support and constituency. Every 
phase of community life, whether it will or not, rests 
on the church. 

Ideally the church should affect all the adverse ele- 
ments in the community life rather than be affected 
by them. The struggle toward this goal will involve 
a number of things. The church must have a sympa- 
thetic interest in the economic, recreational, educa- 
tional, hygienic, civic, and moral life of its community. 

This means that the church will be the spiritual 
dynamo, furnishing its members with power adequate 
to the task of bringing the Christ spirit into all phases 
of community life. The high responsibility of the 
church is ever for spiritual leadership equal alike to 
the heights and depths of human experience as well as 
to the level of each day's need. 

But it must also mean much more. The church may 
have to translate its sympathy with community life in 



32 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

terms of service for it as an organization. Lacking 
another place, it should open its doors to community 
meetings of every worthy description. It should place 
its plant in the hands of the community as a recrea- 
tional asset, even though this may mean enlarging the 
building; and in other ways it should meet all those 
needs which, unmet, would react for ill upon the life 
of the community and thus upon the church. 

Conditions Favorable to Rural Church Centers 
C. J. Galpin 

A community church. — The most favorable condi- 
tion for a church center is the existence of only one 
church in the territory, either large neighborhood in 
open country, or community of village center type, 
where the church is well thought of, is backed by all 
elements of the population, and is willing to assume 
leadership in providing the building and equipment for 
the people's social life and general recreative and in- 
forming enterprises. 

Clergyman a social middleman. — The clergyman is 
in a sense a public servant paid by the people, and 
should have many qualifications for social welfare 
leadership. Where he has the confidence of his com- 
munity as well as of his parish, he has opportunity for 
the use of all his social surplus energy. 

Family ideal. — The permanence and organization of 
the church, comprising as it does the family circle, and 
open as it is to all ages and both sexes, especially 
adapt it to become the medium of a democratic social 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 33 

life, providing it has the liberality of view which will 
open its building to all wholesome interests of the 
people on the land. 

A means of strength to the church. — A favorably 
situated church, holding undisputed religious guard- 
ianship in its region, if strong enough not to be swept 
away from its moral and religious obligations by 
assuming aggressive social obligations to its people, 
might very easily find that it has a new lease of life 
and power in this added responsibility. 

It doubtless would be well to call attention to the 
fact that just as the home has served a great function 
as a place where boys and girls can get acquainted 
at close hand under working conditions and intimate 
living conditions with different individual types of 
personalities, and thereby come to incorporate through 
imagination and sympathy into their own mental habit 
a completer racial life, so the church has always served 
the social function of bringing families of different 
types together for acquaintanceship under auspices 
sometimes quite spiritual, at other times quite ordinary. 
Probably for at least a generation now, this function in 
the country, where acquaintance with human life is 
narrow, somewhat shallow, and somewhat petty, 
should be emphasized. In fact it can hardly be over- 
done. This is why the country church should make 
special occasions of as wide and varied a character as 
possible to bring together people of many kinds and 
occupations, so as to elevate the human experience of 
country life. 



34 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

AFTER ONE YEAR OF SUCCESS IN A COMMUNITY 
CHURCH CENTER THE YEAR AHEAD 

Fred Eastman 

Will you let me give you my dream for the year 
ahead ? I see a church working with the same purpose 
■ — binding together all the divergent elements of our 
changing population in Christian fellowship. I see a 
band of women working faithfully, cheerfully on, 
meeting together, planning festivals, picnics, and en- 
tertainments, providing the children with the things 
that make glad the heart of childhood and the grown- 
ups with the things that only women can provide. I 
see a Sunday-school one hundred and twenty strong, 
studying together, under the guidance of conscientious 
and earnest teachers, lessons that make for nobility 
and strength of character. I see a crowd of men and 
women filling this church, listening to lectures that 
interest and inspire and arouse debates, and to music 
that thrills and touches the most solemn chords of our 
being. I see a music secretary in the community, 
leading and directing not only the music in this church 
but in the glee club and public school and the whole 
neighborhood. I see a choir of fifty children crowding 
that little balcony, a choir the freshness and sweetness 
of whose voices will set these walls ringing with their 
glad harmony. We will have musical services here — 
vesper and evening songs sung by the children. And 
I see the response which these services will call forth 
from the hearts of this community. I see our church 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 35 

filled to the doors; I see men and women coming here 
and hear them saying to one another that they would 
rather be here when our doors are open than anywhere 
else in the community, for it is here that they find rest 
and peace and inspiration. They shall call it their 
home — their House of Service. 

II. The Social Center Parish Plan 
Fred Eastman 

It should be acknowledged at the outset that the 
old circuit system was of great service in the pioneer 
period and even later in the development of the coun- 
try church in America. It should also be granted that 
the circuit system is still a practicable method in many 
parts of the rural domain even to-day, especially in 
the newer and sparsely settled regions. But, on the 
other hand, it should be frankly admitted by every one 
who knows the facts that the changed conditions in our 
rural life demand a change in our methods of minister- 
ing to the people. 

The emphasis of church work is no longer merely 
upon the saving of individuals but also upon the saving 
of the community; and, in a large sense, the saving 
of our rural civilization from becoming pagan. Fur- 
thermore, some of our leading thinkers and writers on 
the rural situation declare that it will soon be a ques- 
tion of whether the churches in the rural districts will 
be able to save themselves if the present condition 
and methods of church life continue. Professor 
Carver says : " Unless the church makes itself a posi- 



36 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

tive factor in the building up of the rural community 
and rural civilization, it will have to get out. And 
in the main the church must rebuild the rural com- 
munity through its own members by making them 
better farmers, better citizens, of more value to the 
community." * 

To save individuals, to save the community, and to 
save itself the country church must adopt an adequate 
plan to meet the demands of modern rural community 
needs. In my judgment that plan best suited to func- 
tion in this field is what I call the social center parish 
plan, or the circular system, as a substitute for the 
old circuit system. I shall discuss this subject from 
the point of view (i) of the plan, (2) of its value as 
a socializing agency, and (3) of its method of working. 

I. THE PLAN 

The plan involves four essential things, the first to> 
be a thorough social survey. The survey is so neces- 
sary and fundamental that it must take precedence of 
the other three. These are a chart, or map of the 
entire parish or community, a program of work cover- 
ing the details of the chart, and a staff of workers with 
voluntary or paid assistants. 

(1) The social survey should include all the facts 
of the community: (a) those that may be termed the 
assets, or life-giving and community-serving resources; 
(b) those that may be termed liabilities; that is, those 
that are life-destroying, or community-destroying 
factors. It should be a geological, biological, demo- 
1 Rural Church Message, p. 115. 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 37 

graphical, and sociological, as well as religious, survey 
of the entire community. 

(2) The chart, or map, should be carefully made 
upon such a scale that every member of the parish can 
understand it. It should be put in usable form for 
distribution, but especially should it be placed in the 
pastor's study, or in the assembly hall, where the facts 
of the community as well as of individual interest and 
responsibility can be pointed out. 

It should not only mark out the present location of 
farmhouses, schools, stores, shops, churches, roads, the 
best soils adapted to certain crops, etc., but it should 
include also the desirable location of these buildings 
and the places where roads ought to be changed, or 
reconstructed, or graded; those in which new bridges 
should be built, and where all public improvements 
should be made. All these should be so carefully and 
graphically presented by charts, photographs, and let- 
tering that it would be a means of public education 
in what the community ought to be. Striking con- 
trasts of what is and what ought to be in rural life 
can be very easily and cheaply presented by paper and 
ink, or by photographs and posters. And these are 
often more convincing and saving than some sermons 
I have heard in rural churches. 1 

(3) A program of work. To illustrate: I have in 
my mind our summer camp all charted and mapped 
out, and a program of work for the next year, and 

1 For a good community map see " The Social Anatomy of an 
Agricultural Community," by Prof. C. J. Galpin, Research Bulle- 
tin No. 34, Madison, Wisconsin. 



38 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

perhaps for several years. I know all the dead trees 
that need to be cut next summer, the stumps and stones 
I want to remove from the soil, the paths I am going 
to make in the woods, the kind of treatment the soil 
of the garden requires, the kind of boat-house I want 
to build, the color and quality of the paint to be put 
on the buildings, and many other details. So the rural 
leader of the social center parish should have outlined 
a program of work so that he will not only see things 
done in the community, but will actually get the young 
life at work, in order that it may function in the essen- 
tials of rural leadership and community service. How 
are you going to keep the boys in the church and train 
them for real service in the Kingdom? That should 
be planned out before there is a tendency for the group 
to lapse from the Sunday-school and to leave the farm 
for a prodigal experience. 

How are you going to keep that rich old lady, a 
little eccentric perhaps, from leaving her property to 
the endowment of a dog kennel or a feline sanitarium, 
and persuade her, instead, to endow some scholarships 
for the country boys in some form of research that 
will help the community, or to give it for the employ- 
ment of a young man or a young woman to supervise 
the play life of the community, so that the children 
will not fight like cats and dogs at their play? In 
every detail of community betterment this plan makes 
possible a program and opens up the way to per- 
formance. 

(4) A staff of workers. This is absolutely neces- 
sary, and where volunteers cannot be had it will re- 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CEXTER 39 

quire a paid staff, such as the County Work Depart- 
ment is putting into some of the communities through 
its statesmanlike program for rural community better- 
ment. 

The graduates of the agricultural college and rural 
high school can be enlisted for this kind of work. 
Instead of trying to get every young man to express 
his religious experience in the same way, as in my 
boyhood days, we will come up to the position of Paul 
in recognizing that in the work of the Kingdom there 
are varieties of gifts but the same spirit. 

So I would have a specialist on soils, one on plant 
pests and diseases, one on stock-breeding and dairying, 
one on rural home planning, one on hygiene and sani- 
tation, one on recreation and amusement in rural com- 
munities, one on religious education and adolescence, 
and one on any other important phase of the com- 
munity need brought out in the survey and charted in 
the program. 

2. ITS VALUE AS A SOCIALIZING AGENCY 

Such an institution as the rural church organized on 
the social center parish plan has two essential social 
aims as its function in the community : ( 1 ) to socialize 
the community in consciousness, (2) to socialize the 
community in its activity. 

(1) Socializing a community in consciousness. — A 
community is socialized in consciousness when it 
comes to acknowledge the necessary facts in social 
evolution of the need for social cleavage in com- 
munity-building, and at the same time develops that 



40 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

social sympathy which keeps these class-conscious 
groups in sympathetic cooperation with each other in 
carrying on the work necessary to the fullest life of 
the community. In other words, the church should 
so broaden the people's definition of the kingdom of 
God on earth that every man and woman who is doing 
a necessary part of the world's work which has to do 
with the health and happiness of the community as a 
whole may be conscious of doing the work of the 
Kingdom, and should, therefore, receive a just share of 
the rewards society offers of social esteem and of 
economic values, wages, or goods, produced by labor 
of whatever sort. With such a chart and program as I 
have described above, it would not be difficult to 
develop such a social consciousness in the minds of all 
the people of the parish. 

(2) Socializing a community in activity. — When is 
a community socialized in activity? When, awakened 
to the consciousness of its needs, it has developed ade- 
quate organization of its population, invented efficient 
social machinery, and trained effective social en- 
gineers to make use of its available resources for all 
the people within the community so that they will be 
in possession of that equality of opportunity which 
means, not the chance to secure control of resources 
and exploit them for personal or for corporate ends, 
but the equality of opportunity to secure for each a 
just share of the products of industry through dis- 
tribution according to the measure of services ren- 
dered. In other words, a community is socialized 
when it has developed a social medium through which 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 41 

there is a reciprocal correspondence between human 
needs and available resources. 

To me this is, in brief, the function of the country 
church as a socializing agency in the building up of 
the community life that will correspond to the New 
Testament conception of the kingdom of God on earth. 

3. METHOD OF WORKING THE PLAN 

No plan, however scientific and workable, will work 
itself. It has to be worked, and the man who works it 
must have the essential elements of social leadership 
in his makeup. 

(1) Such a plan must have a leader who loves 
work, who can sense the needs of a community, who 
has a constructive imagination, and who has will 
power, or a persistent purpose to succeed when he 
knows he is right. 

(2) It requires an adequate financial plan of sup- 
port. A fool project may succeed if properly financed, 
while a reasonable plan may fail if not properly 
financed. In most communities the people will pay 
for what they get if they are convinced the goods are 
worth the money. Sometimes it is necessary to intro- 
duce the goods by gift, or cut the price to one half 
the value. So in some rural communities it will be 
necessary at first to get financial support for the cen- 
tral parish plan from private gifts or from denomina- 
tional funds outside the community to be served. 
The County Work Department has demonstrated the 
feasibility of this plan. 

(3) Such a plan on a large scale involves a more 



42 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

statesmanlike policy of the administration of home 
missions and church extension funds by some of the 
Protestant denominations than has been evident hith- 
erto. Instead of doling out drips to defunct churches 
in over-churched communities, or for petty plans for 
new enterprises of little importance, if these boards 
would set aside a fund for establishing a few central 
parishes in communities that would act as imitation 
centers for other communities, it seems to me we 
would make greater progress in home missions and 
church extension than we are now making under our 
present policy, which we have inherited from the 
pioneer past. 

(4) Cooperation by overhead organizations of 
Home Missions Boards for the country church should 
be secured as a definite policy for rural communities : 

(a) by dividing the rural field into " spheres of influ- 
ence," as has been done in the foreign field, and re- 
cently in Mexico by foreign mission boards. This 
would apply especially to rural fields not yet churched. 

(b) By getting common consent to unite where the 
people can be persuaded to follow the lead, leaving the 
responsibility of administration to the denomination 
agreed upon by the people; (c) by adopting the "give 
and take" principle as between the denominations on 
reciprocal terms, for different communities, where, in 
the one, denomination " A " is stronger than denom- 
ination " B," and in the other, denomination " B " is 
stronger than denomination "A." Here we have an 
exchange which leaves both denominations equally 
strong as a whole, and locally stronger because of the 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 43 

elimination of competition and waste. This applies 
only to fields where there is competition or stagnation; 
where this cannot be secured the overhead organiza- 
tions should agree (d) to adopt the law of adaptation 
to environment, or the law of the survival of the fittest, 
and help the church that is willing to organize its 
work on a community basis; that is, with the aim to 
serve the whole community without reference to de- 
nomination, and then let the others die, or hustle to do 
likewise. 

III. Examples of Community Serving 
Churches 

It will not be possible within the limits of this report 
to give a very large list of the country churches already 
organized on the Social Center Parish Plan and doing 
successful work as community centers. 

Typical examples may be found described by Dr. 
Warren H. Wilson in The Church at the Center, chap- 
ter IV, and in The Church of the Open Country, 
chapter VIII. 

i. One of the most successful is the Presbyterian 
Church at Hanover, New Jersey, under the leadership 
of the pastor, the Rev. R. H. M. Augustine. Here we 
see a splendid old parish with a central church building 
in a territory given largely to dairying, truck farming, 
and fruit-growing, and surrounded by four smaller 
centers each with a chapel where a Sunday-school is 
conducted in the afternoons, and where preaching is 
held in the afternoon or evening. The parish has a 
thriving agricultural league and a cow-testing associa- 



44 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

tion, holds community meetings in the church, and has 
developed a community consciousness that is being ex- 
pressed in many forms of helpful service to the whole 
community as well as to the larger interests of the 
kingdom of God outside the community. 

2. The Methodist Episcopal Church of Leland, Il- 
linois, the Rev. Willis Ray Wilson, minister, is an- 
other illustration of a church that is organized on the 
community center basis. The work of this church is 
described in part in The Church at the Center, by 
Warren H. Wilson, pages 59-61. Since this was 
written the pastor has done even more successful work 
in this interesting parish. 

3. The Reformed Church of Locust Valley, Long 
Island, New York, under the leadership of the Rev. 
Fred Eastman. The work of this parish and its plan 
of organization is described in a pamphlet entitled " A 
Year's Work." The problem of this successful leader 
was to make the " oldtimers " and the " newcomers " 
see that the community and its institutions are theirs, 
that they belong to both, and that each has a share in 
the responsibility for the social and moral atmosphere 
of the neighborhood. In this neighborhood denomina- 
tional competition was given up by sister denomina- 
tions as a result of splendid community leadership by 
the pastor of this church. 

4. The Presbyterian Church, Cazenovia, New York, 
the Rev. Silas E. Persons, minister. The work of this 
community center church is described in part by the 
pastor in Solving the Country Church Problem, by 
Bricker, chapter XIII. 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 45 

5. The Larger Benzonia Parish, in Benzie County, 
Michigan, the Rev. Harlow S. Mills, minister. The 
story of this interesting and successful community 
church work is told by the minister himself in The 
Making of a Country Parish, published by the Mis- 
sionary Education Movement, New York. 

6. One of the most interesting cases of the building 
up of a community center by the work of a minister 
with vision in a very discouraging situation on an old 
broken-down circuit is that of the Rev. John S. Bur- 
ton, Suflern, New York (Rural Delivery). A story 
of this parish work is told by Fred Eastman in the 
Survey for May 23, 19 14. The closing paragraph 
contains this interesting characterization of the force 
of this man as a social engineer in the community. 
" This little Methodist preacher is on no committee; 
he is not chairman, or secretary, or treasurer. He is 
just a sort of two-legged prayer-meeting, going about 
the community filling everybody full of the Holy 
Spirit." 

7. Prof. Galpin in Bulletin 234 (January, 1914), 
of the Agricultural Experiment Station of the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin gives the description of St. 
Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Ashton, Dane County, 
Wisconsin, as a Rural Church Center. The parochial 
school building is used as a community center. Series 
of lectures are given by the priest to the young men 
of the farms on such topics as " Scientific Agricul- 
ture," " Taking the Short Course at the College of 
Agriculture," " Beautifying the Home and Farm," 
" Ornamental Shrubs and Flowering Plants." 



46 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

This church maintains a parish library on country 
life, fairly up-to-date books on scientific agriculture, 
country life bulletins from the Department of Agri- 
culture, at Washington, District of Columbia, bulletins 
from the State College of Agriculture, magazines, and 
the like. 

He also describes in this bulletin the work of other 
denominations, such as the Pigeon Creek Norwegian 
Evangelical Lutheran Church Hall, Trempealem 
County, Wisconsin; Fairfield Baptist Church, Hall, 
Sauk County, Wisconsin, and several others. 

8. The pamphlet, " Country Churches of Distinc- 
tion," published by the Presbyterian Board of Home 
Missions, Country Church Work, gives brief sketches 
of fifty churches in Ohio, a large number of which are 
community-serving churches. 

9. Many other examples could be given, but these 
are sufficient to encourage those who are seeking to 
enlarge the scope of the country churches they are 
serving to include the whole community. 

IV. Recommendations 

1. That administrative Boards of Home Missions 
having to do with rural fields make a more scientific 
study of the rural domain with reference to> its actual 
needs, available resources, and strategic centers where 
permanent church enterprises of the community center 
type may be established. This could be done coop- 
eratively in a comparatively brief period by the leading 
denominational boards without overlapping and at no 
great expense, if the entire rural domain were divided 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 47 

into regions and surveyed by men and women of 
ability according to a definite plan. 

2. That the Social Center Parish Plan be adopted as 
the ideal toward which all denominations should work. 
This will give a system with a central plant and staff of 
workers organized on the basis of service to the entire 
community or countryside, and so insuring community 
consciousness and promoting social solidarity. 

3. That Home Mission Boards adopt the plan of 
the foreign boards in the selection and training of 
volunteers for the field, in order that we may make 
the open country as impelling as the foreign field from 
the new point of life investment, so that we may get 
the best type of leadership to enlist for the country 
church field. 

4. That definite courses of study be given in the 
theological schools and in colleges and universities 
looking toward life-work in this field; and that courses 
in Rural Bible Study, as well as courses on other forms 
of mission w r ork, be given by the Christian Associa- 
tions in these institutions. 

5. That fellowships be established for key-men in 
our theological seminaries who could, after graduation, 
spend a year or two on the study of some rural church 
field with the view of giving their lives to this kind of 
work; and that scholarships be given to some country 
ministers to attend a summer school on Methods in 
Rural Leadership and the Country Church, so that on 
their return they may become community leaders for 
the central parish or rural region. 

6. That administrative overhead organizations hav- 



48 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

ing to do with the expenditure of Home Mission 
Funds encourage the formation of a parish budget for 
the community center which would localize responsi- 
bility and programs and expenditure, and lead ulti- 
mately to self-support. And that no funds be appro- 
priated to any church which has not made a survey of 
its field, organized its work on a community basis, and 
secured a staff of workers (voluntary or paid), and 
chosen a leader capable of organizing the work of the 
whole parish; unless it be a case of charity, in which 
case the appropriation should come from a separate 
fund for that purpose. 

If the overhead organizations in Rural Church 
Work will arrange themselves upon the basis of these 
proposals, we believe it will not be long before this 
vast resource field for the nation's needs will be en- 
tirely reclaimed as a lost home field, and again will 
be furnishing, as in the past, the largest percentage of 
the economic, political, moral, educational, and relig- 
ious leadership of our new civilization, which, we 
trust, will be the realization of our hopes — the kingdom 
of God come. 

V. Selected Bibliography 

Rural Social Centers in Wisconsin, Bulletin 234, by 
C. J. Galpin, Madison, Wisconsin. 

The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community, 
Research Bulletin 34, May, 191 5, by C. J. Galpin, 
Madison, Wisconsin. 

The Story of John Frederick Oberlin, by A. F. 
Beard, Pilgrim Press. 



THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 49 

Making of a Country Parish, by Harlan S. Mills, 
Missionary Education Movement. 

The Church at the Center, by Warren H. Wilson, 
Missionary Education Movement. 

Solving the Country Church Problem, by Garland 
A. Bricker, Methodist Book Concern. 

The Rural Church Movement, by Edwin L. Earp, 
Methodist Book Concern. 

The Church of the Open Country, by Warren H. 
Wilson, Missionary Education Movement. 

Cooperation in Coopersburg, by Edmund de S. 
Brunner, Missionary Education Movement. 

Country Church and Community Cooperation, by 
Henry Israel, Association Press. 

The Country Church and the Rural Problem, by 
Kenyon L. Butterfield, University of Chicago Press. 

The Country Church, by Gilford Pinchot and 
Charles Otis Gill, The Macmillan Co. 

Rural Church Message (Men and Religion Move- 
ment), The Association Press. 

The Challenge of the Country, by G. Walter Fiske, 
Association Press. 

The Day of the Country Church, by J. O. Ashen- 
hurst, Funk and Wagnalls Co. 

A Natural Community Center, article by R. C. 
Keagy, in Successful Farming, November, 19 15. 



50 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

THE OVERCHURCHING OF RURAL 
COMMUNITIES 

A. W. Taylor 

The rational approach to the rural church problem 
is through a thoroughgoing survey of the rural church 
situation and an analysis of the field and the forces at 
work. Sufficient surveys have thus far been made to 
indicate certain inescapable facts regarding the dupli- 
cation of church efforts in the average rural com- 
munity. Those who survey the whole field are agreed 
regarding the necessity of making the rural church a 
community church, and they are also agreed that there 
are certain fundamental weaknesses in the present in- 
stitutional situation. 

No city church would expect to grow and prosper 
without a settled pastor. Few country churches are 
found to possess such a pastor, although the farmer 
Christian is in no wise different from the city Chris- 
tian in his spiritual needs, nor are his churches in any 
wise different in their organic needs from those of the 
city; yet the rural church is too small to support a 
settled pastor. Again, it has been found that the 
prosperity of the rural church is in direct ratio to the 
number of its services and the size of its membership; 
but the average rural church, whose membership runs 
from sixty to eighty souls, has preaching only once a 
month by a preacher who resides outside the com- 
munity, and who gives it little if any pastoral atten- 
tion. So small a church is unable to support a resi- 



OVERCHURCHING OF RURAL COMMUNITIES 51 

dent pastor or even to support a man who will give 
some time to pastoral work; thus without a shepherd 
or an organizer the life of such churches is limited to 
that of worship and to whatever organization may be 
effected by unled local workers. The neighboring town 
church has four to five times the membership and is 
thus able to support a resident pastor, to conduct 
services every Sunday, to have oversight, to effect per- 
manent organizations, to rise to leadership, to train 
the workers, and to< secure a shepherding of the flock. 
And through them all it has a chance to succeed. Then 
the impressiveness of its audiences, the formidable- 
ness and energy of its organization, the constant at- 
tention of its pastor, and the very success with which 
its activities are carried on begets greater success. 
Because it does things it is able to enlist both men 
and money. Activity begets greater activity and en- 
lists both patronage and financial support. In the 
country small congregations beget small congrega- 
tions, listless activities beget listlessness; occasional 
services are unable to inspire activity; little to pay for 
makes small challenge to generosity. 

In a church survey made of Boone County, Mis- 
souri, the home of the state university, sixty-seven 
rural churches were found, or one to every forty-six 
rural families in the county. Their average member- 
ship is about eighty. Only one of them had a resident 
pastor, and he preached for three other churches at 
considerable distances. On the first of January, 191 5, 
not one of them afforded preaching more than once 
each month and many of them not so often. Almost 



52 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

one half of them had no Sunday-schools, and of those 
who did only a few kept their schools alive during the 
winter months. Few of them had any sort of mis- 
sionary or young people's organizations. The average 
pastor's salary was about $200, and the budget for the 
entire work of the church was less than $250. There 
is not a single one of these churches that does not 
have from two to seven others within four miles of its 
church site. What is true of this county is true of 
multitudinous others. The overchurching may not be 
so bad in many others, but it is of like type in prac- 
tically all other farming counties, and thus the situa- 
tion may be said to be fairly characteristic. 

Now the most primary analysis of this situation in 
the light of the necessities of church efficiency is con- 
vincing. There are simply too many churches for any 
of them to be efficient. They cannot afford resident 
pastors because no one of them can support a resident 
pastor, and no three or four of them in the same com- 
munity can unite to support one because they belong 
to different denominations. They cannot support a 
live Sunday-school because there are not enough chil- 
dren to make a live school in each and every one of 
them, and inevitably the attempt of one to support a 
good school begets a competitive attempt in the other 
nearest by, and the field is divided, the cleavage run- 
ning just as deep as the struggles to activity drive it. 
They are too much concerned about the competitive 
local conditions in keeping the various churches alive 
to have much interest in missionary work, feeling that 
the smallness of their membership puts upon them too 



OVERCHURCHIXG OF RURAL COMMUNITIES 53 

great a burden for local support. If one of them un- 
dertakes a community program, the community is im- 
mediately divided through their sectarian loyalties, and 
religion, instead of being the dominant force for unity 
in the community, becomes ofttimes the greatest force 
making for disunity. 

This overchurched condition is a survival from the 
pioneer days. In earlier days the sectarian shibboleth 
rallied people. When the country was new, the pioneer 
preacher came to establish churches of his peculiar 
creedal persuasion. The question was not, Has this 
new community a church that preaches Christ? but 
Has it a church of our persuasion preaching Christ? 
Thus the various small congregations were founded 
side by side. In many cases the schools of these com- 
munities are taking on the modern spirit. Agriculture 
is catching the teaching of science. The business life 
of the farm is being organized upon an efficiency basis. 
All the other pioneer elements of community life are 
giving way to the better and more modern regime, but 
the church remains as a survival of the pioneer time. 
It has the same insularity and lack of missionary spirit 
and retains the old method of living upon preaching 
alone. There is danger lest the growing community 
spirit pass the church by. Many workers in the agri- 
cultural and rural life field have already come to re- 
gard the country church as a negligible factor in their 
efforts to communize rural life and found it upon a 
cooperative basis. The old sectarian shibboleths are 
failing to rally the younger generation, and there is • 
danger lest in the slow decadence of the rural congre- 



54 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

gation religion itself shall suffer. Christianity would 
thrive much better in the rural community with one 
fourth the present number of churches. The ques- 
tion as to which should die will not be easily settled. 
None will be willing to become a vicarious sacrifice 
to the larger religious life of the community, and it is 
possible that in many places they will all die together 
through each struggling to retain its life; thus in the 
struggle of churches that have ceased to function there 
is grave danger to the religious and moral life of the 
community. 

One way out is suggested by those who have faith 
that a movement can be inaugurated at the top and 
the various denominations brought to agree on a reci- 
procity of interest through an exchange of membership 
in various fields; that is, by the willingness of one 
communion to withdraw from one field and have its 
communicants unite with a neighboring church, while 
the other communion makes a like transfer in another 
field. There are many difficulties in the way of this 
solution: the more dogmatically inclined denomina- 
tions will refuse to enter such a reciprocal arrange- 
ment; the more democratic and congregationally 
organized communions have no machinery able to 
accomplish it, and any attempt by conventions or 
supervisory agencies to effect it will be met with 
vigorous protest from the rank and file; and in most 
localities there will be a considerable minority that will 
refuse to accept such an arrangement unless it is made 
by the local congregations on their own initiative. 
The best a movement at the top can expect to do is to 



OVERCHURCHIXG OF RURAL COMMUNITIES 55 

agitate and educate and to effect an occasional exem- 
plary union. 

A thoroughgoing appreciation of the difficulties af- 
forded by sectarian loyalty, independent polity, tradi- 
tion, and indifference to the gravity of the situation 
leads one to suspect that there will have to be a sort 
of a " survival of the fit " selective process. The 
local church that arises to the demands of the situation 
by adopting a thoroughgoing community program will 
gradually draw to its support all those elements in the 
community life that cannot be interested in the older 
doctrinal and individualistic program and will also 
win many from their conventional loyalties to the 
more virile life of a socialized church. The new 
interest is intensely human and the old sectarian shib- 
boleths will loose their clutch; the new program is 
broad and in harmony with the spirit of the age, and 
while it sacrifices nothing true in the old, it revivifies 
it with vision and a good-neighborliness that will 
bring the church into the spirit of the times in which 
we live. The process will be a slow one, no doubt, 
for institutions change slowly; but the institutions 
of religion must readapt themselves to the larger spirit 
and demands of the time or the old type of church 
will have to give way to a new and more plastic type 
that can better show forth the fraternity and broth- 
erly love of Christianity and bring in the kingdom of 
God. 



56 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

THE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF THE 
CHURCH TO THE COMMUNITY 

S. K. Mosiman 

The average community in the Middle States is 
made up of various groups of people bound together 
more or less strongly by ties of common interest. The 
stability of any particular group depends upon the 
strength of the interest that forms the bond of union. 
Time usually severs all bonds. Community groups ac- 
cordingly are subject to change; they disintegrate or 
coalesce as interest directs. The interests that per- 
vade and dominate any particular group are of a social 
rather than of an economic nature. It is always 
difficult to get farmers to cooperate for mutual 
advantage in buying or selling, or for any economic 
advantage or improvement. It is easy, on the other 
hand, for people to unite for social advantage, 
provided always that the interests of the different 
individuals and groups are common. 

It is not easy to resolve a larger community into its 
group elements. What may be true of one com- 
munity may not at all hold true of another. Few 
communities, however, are a unit in social interests. 
The community of which I wish to speak on this oc- 
casion is one that has been known to me for many 
years from observation. I do not claim that it is a 
typical community. I do claim, however, that it does 
show the tendency of communities to divide along the 
line of group interests. In this community that I have 



SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF CHURCH 57 

known for forty years the following groups may be 
clearly traced. 

Strongly marked are the nationalistic groups. 
Originally this community was settled by the pioneers 
who came in from the eastern states. Later, families 
from foreign lands came in, notably Germans. The 
original settlers built their churches, and when the 
Germans came in they had little in common with the 
old settlers. A new set of churches of various creeds 
took the place of the older churches. In some cases, 
too, the church that was displaced was of the same 
faith as the one that took its place. National inter- 
ests and feelings were clearly the forces that held the 
groups together. We see here that the social instinct 
or feeling is stronger even than the religious. It is 
also stronger than the economic interests, for all the 
men of the community, regardless of nationality, met 
for transaction of business. 

We notice in the next place the provincial group. 
Families moved into the community from a neighbor- 
ing state, or from other communities in the same 
state. These families are not always received at once 
into the existing social order. They form the nucleus 
of a group, attracting to themselves other strangers 
that may come into the community. 

We must note, of course, the religious groups or 
the denominational groups which are found in almost 
every larger community. Sectarian differences are not 
so strongly marked to-day as in former years. In 
some sections, however, they are still strong enough 
to make dividing lines for social meetings and gather- 



58 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

ings. Even to-day it is difficult for an outsider or 
a newcomer to break into the social group of an ex- 
clusive church. People are invited to attend church 
services and even prayer-meetings much more readily 
than they are invited to participate in the social activi- 
ties of the church group. 

Almost every community has its non-religious 
group or groups. People who are out of the church 
are frequently found associating together. Their in- 
difference or opposition to religion forms the bond 
which binds this group together. They, too, find 
ways and means of associating with one another and 
they are drawn together, not so much on account of 
their indifference to religion, as from the need of 
meeting with some one on a social basis. 

Another group that may be mentioned and one that 
has been growing in recent years is the class group 
due to a division of labor. The various surveys that 
have been made in Ohio show that a small per cent, of 
the hired men go to church on Sunday. They do, 
however, meet on Sunday with other hired men of 
the community. Recently I had the experience of 
hearing a hired man in a certain family calling up on 
a Sunday morning over the telephone three or four of 
his associates asking them to meet him in a neighbor- 
ing town, to spend the Sunday. When I asked him 
why he did not attend services with the family, he 
replied that there was no one at that church that he 
was acquainted with. We see here, again, that the 
social interests draw men together. There is also a 
growing disinclination on the part of landowners to 



SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF CHURCH 59 

meet renters on an equal social basis. This accounts 
for the fact, also brought out in the survey of Ohio, 
that, as compared with those who own their farms, 
a small proportion of renters are interested in the 
country church. 

Other groups might no doubt be found in the same 
community where these various groups mentioned have 
held sway at one time or another. But in all the 
groups we find the same tendency to meet on a social 
rather than on an economic basis. People may unite 
in business and in the every-day affairs of life and 
yet be very far apart in their sympathies, or in what 
they think constitutes their social interests. 

It is of interest to note also that a group usually has 
a meeting-place, or some rallying point. The church 
does not afford the only meeting-place. That the 
church services alone do not supply every human need 
is clearly seen from the tendency to meet after church 
for a few minutes of visiting that can be seen in any 
typical country church. In this half hour of visiting 
after a church service different social groups may 
appear. The groups, however, that are not religious 
find other meeting-places. I know of a certain group 
who went to town on Saturday afternoon for the pur- 
pose of meeting their friends on the street as regu- 
larly as many people go to church. The saloon, the 
lodge or club, or even a hay-loft, may be the meeting- 
place to keep alive group interests. 

There may be communities where these group in- 
terests are of minor importance. In the community 
that I have in mind, however, the church was ground 



60 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

to powder between the upper and nether millstones of 
conflicting group interests. 

Some Churches That Have Failed 

When I speak of the church as having failed in this 
community, I am not thinking of the church of one 
denomination. In the community where I spent the 
early years of my life one may count at least ten 
empty country churches from the hilltop where my 
home was situated. These churches were of various 
denominations: Reformed, United Brethren, Baptist, 
Presbyterian, Mennonite, and others. On the whole 
one cannot say that they failed because the community 
was overchurched. Nor can one say that the ministers 
were not faithful, nor that the gospel was not 
preached. It was neither that the churches were too 
liberal nor too orthodox. Some of these things may 
have entered as contributive causes. 

We are living in a time of surveys. We make a 
survey to ascertain the present condition of a com- 
munity, or to find out the standing of a country 
church. If we should make a survey backward, we 
might learn something about the causes of the failure 
of these churches. As I look back with a riper experi- 
ence I can now see that conflicting group interests 
were the chief cause of decline in every one of the 
churches. In each case there was a lack of connection 
between the old interests of the community or group 
and the new interests that came in. These interests 
were not always antagonistic, but they were unable 
to break through the social walls erected. In some 



SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF CHURCH 61 

cases, of course, new churches took the place of the 
old, while in other cases a country church was absorbed 
by a town church. In each case, however, there was a 
moral loss to the community when a church failed. 
To some extent, of course, sectarianism contributed to 
the decline of certain churches. But with the change 
and readjustment that was constantly going on in this 
community there was always a large portion of the 
people that were outside of the church. In every case 
where one church was absorbed by another, or where 
new people came into the community and brought with 
them their own church, a portion of the membership 
of the old church lost all their church relationship 
and interest. This is true because they placed group 
interests above community interests and religious in- 
terests. But as stated before, group interests are of a 
social nature rather than of an economic or religious 
nature. 

Some Successful Country Churches 

The successful country church is one where the 
community interests and the religious interests are 
larger than the group interests. On a recent Sunday 
I attended a service at a country church that repre- 
sented to me, to some extent at least, what a country 
church ought to be. People came in from every direc- 
tion, — fathers, mothers, grandparents, and children; 
the whole family, in fact, came to church. The pastor 
informed me that so far as he knew there was not a 
family within a radius of five miles of the church that 
was not Christian and that did not attend the Sunday- 



62 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

school or church. The whole atmosphere of the 
church spoke of prosperity and contentment. The 
church was in one sense a social center, ministering to 
the social needs of the community as well as to the 
spiritual, though I doubt if many of the members had 
ever paid much attention to what we call social 
service or community interests. 

In central Illinois there are large communities of 
Mennonites and Amish. Permit me to give an illus- 
tration of one of the Amish churches and its standing 
in the community. In fact the church and the com- 
munity are identical. These people make their church 
life a thing of vital importance. They have a very 
large church building, costing perhaps $40,000. In 
the church they have a very large basement that is 
made use of every Sunday. On a Sunday morning 
the families of the surrounding community may be 
seen going to church. As a rule, all attend. During 
the service some of the sisters are delegated to prepare 
coffee in the basement of the church. At the noon 
hour all partake of a common meal. After the meal 
another service is held in the afternoon. The church 
is serving the community, in that it supplies an oppor- 
tunity to meet on a social basis. It is, however, an 
exclusive church. It may be called a Brotherhood 
that admits to its membership only those who accept 
wholly and altogether its principles. This church has 
solved the community problem by buying out all other 
landowners of the community. Incidentally they have 
advanced the price of land in central Illinois above that 
of any other community. They have solved the com- 



SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF CHURCH 63 

munity problem in their own way. Their exclusive- 
ness, however, makes it probable that their difficulties 
will come from within. Nevertheless, these churches 
do point out the way in which an ideal country church 
might be conducted. 

I should like to mention one more church that has a 
membership of nearly a thousand, and a Sunday- 
school of more than a thousand, that is solving the 
country church problem. This church is in a town and 
has many members living in the town. A new church 
has been built that seats at least two thousand people. 
Here, too, religious interests are made the dominating 
force. This is possible and in a sense easy, because 
the people are of one nationality, and have similar 
interests and tastes, and social inclinations for both 
town and country. One can only hope that such a 
church will continue to hold fast to that which it has. 
For it the ordinary country church problem does not 
exist. The social needs of the community are being 
met without special effort at organization for the 
purpose. 

We might examine every successful country church, 
and we should clearly find that in each case the com- 
munity is more or less united, not only in religious 
views, but in their social ideas and interests as well. 
The aim, then, of a country church should be not 
only to work for unity in belief but to work to bring 
unity out of the social chaos that is so often found 
in a community. 

The question arises of course as to how this can be 
done. I can only point out that the church should 



64 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

present a program large enough to interest all the 
people in the whole community. Is this possible? I 
think it is. The last words of Jesus to his disciples 
were : " Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all 
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, 
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them 
to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded 
you; and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end 
of the world." In these words we are told to teach 
all things that Jesus has commanded us. Surely in 
the teaching of Jesus there is a program large enough 
to meet every condition, even the social condition 
that may exist in any commimity. I sometimes think 
that we have touched only the fringes of the teachings 
of Jesus. 

If the church wishes to have a program large 
enough to unify the conflicting social interests in any 
commimity, it must present large ideas. The revival 
of the spelling-bee, which has been tried in Ohio, will 
not solve the problem. Good as agencies and organ- 
izations of such nature may be to draw people to- 
gether in a social way, they usually are not large 
enough. Especially is this true of institutions that 
have perished because they ceased to serve their com- 
munities. 

May I just point out some of the teaching which 
I think should be emphasized in our churches and 
which is large enough to solve some of the problems? 

First of these let me mention the brotherhood of 
man. The church has forgotten to place sufficient 
emphasis on the teaching of Jesus on the brotherhood 



SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF CHURCH 65 

of man and especially on the brotherhood of believers. 
The brotherhood that Jesus came to establish is an 
inclusive brotherhood, not an exclusive one. It is a 
brotherhood which is willing to take the lowest and 
raise him to the level of the highest. It is a brother- 
hood for which there are no substitutes. No lodge 
or club or any sort of an organization can take the 
place of the brotherhood of Jesus. It rises even above 
sectarian and denominational lines; yes, it rises above 
national lines. To-day, when all the world is at war, 
can there be any greater need to re-emphasize and 
preach anew than that all men are brothers? This 
idea alone is large enough to wipe out all minor dif- 
ferences and to create a new interest in every com- 
munity in the place of the group interests that destroy. 

Another thought which needs emphasis to-day is the 
sanctity of the home. There are forces at work which 
tend to undermine the home. And when the home is 
undermined, the very pillars of the state are threat- 
ened. This idea, too, is large enough to be preached 
in every community, and to overshadow any group 
interests that may threaten the welfare of the com- 
munity, and it will tend to unite the various conflicting 
interests into one harmonious whole. 

Finally, there is need to-day to draw our communi- 
ties together through the emphasis which can be laid 
and must be laid upon national righteousness. It is 
righteousness that exalts a nation. There can be no 
righteousness in a nation except as it is found in tne 
individual. The preaching of righteousness and jus- 
tice in relation to social conditions would do much to 



66 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

give men a larger idea of society, and it would help to 
break down the special group interests. 

The responsibility of the church to the community 
is this : she must give the community a vision which 
transcends the narrow group interests that are usually 
found in a community. This must be done along the 
line which divides communities into groups. The 
gospel of Jesus Christ is human enough in its man- 
ward aspects to meet every social condition that may 
exist. In its Godward aspects it is divine enough to 
furnish the motive which will lift men out of their 
surroundings and place them on a higher plane. 



THE NEW COUNTRY CHURCH 
Ward Piatt 

The country village church of boyhood days! We 
stand again near the old farmhouse. It is a sunny 
summer Sunday morning. The very air seems 
charged with healing peace. It is vibrant with a single 
note, the wave-like melody of the old church bell 
whose call over the intervening miles seems to our 
childish fancy — " come — come." 

A ride in the family wagon, or, better still, astride 
a farm horse, and we came to the church. A plat- 
form was stretched across the entire front. It was 
filled with men and boys visiting and noting the ar- 
rivals. 



THE NEW COUNTRY CHURCH 67 

One felt when he drove in at the church gate that 
he was passing a weekly inspection. It was an occa- 
sion. When the last bell had " tolled," and choir and 
preacher and people were in their places, the preacher 
read the first hymn as if a momentous message was in 
waiting. Scattered among the company were com- 
manding figures who even yet are our embodiment of 
various Christian graces. 

We date mostly from that company. They were 
our sponsors and our tribunal if we wandered. A 
fine new church has succeeded the old. The glory of 
the latter house totally eclipses the former, yet to us 
there is but one church preeminent — the old box struc- 
ture of our boyhood. 

This is the experience of thousands, and if the pres- 
ent country church rises to its mission it will be the 
experience of millions. To make to-day's rural 
church to a countryside anything like what the hamlet 
church has been to us would be a godsend to our 
American life. 

The great body of our Protestantism is rural. A 
decided minority of us are in great cities. A new 
country church that will fit these new times as well 
as the old did past times — a church that will give the 
equivalent of our former chance to the young in this 
their year 19 15 — is a fundamental requisite of the 
kingdom of God. But literally to restore for them the 
church of our youth would prove a perversion. Our 
church fitted our youth. It would misfit theirs. 

This means, then, that a reconstructed rural church 
in^oo many cases is an inferior copy of the old with 



68 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

almost no adaptation to the present generation. It 
is much deserted. A museum is seldom crowded. 

What changes have so antiquated the old rural 
church? Generally speaking those which might be 
expected in a virile, progressive nation, but especially 
the new agriculture and its concomitants, — better 
roads, rural mail routes, and modern country schools. 
Rural intelligence, as ever, ballasts the nation. One 
institution has lagged in the march — the country 
church. It is not in the front of the procession as 
formerly. It will, however, more than regain its 
former preeminence. The new country life movement, 
spreading over the nation, not only means a recon- 
structed rural life but one which will demand the 
highest type of Christian ministry. 

The ministry itself will be the chief pioneer of this 
new church life. It will adjust itself to modern, pro- 
gressive community life. The agricultural college and 
state educational leaders are master builders in this 
new order, but when the arch of the social structure 
is to receive its keystone they look for one man to 
place it — the modern country preacher. 

No question in Christian circles is more insistent 
than " What of the country church ?" Just now it 
overshadows discussion concerning city conditions. 
The case diagnosed shows the utter dependence of the 
city on the country. So helpless is the city in its 
relationships to the country that a possible separation 
would bankrupt the city, — materially, intellectually, 
and morally, and this in short order. This makes clear 
the debt of the city to the country. The city has ex- 



THE NEW COUNTRY CHURCH 69 

ploited it. Its monstrous maw has with reckless prodi- 
gality swallowed and wasted the resources of the open 
country until now the city is in danger because of these 
depleted sources of its life. Not only has the city 
directly preyed upon the country; it has urbanized it. 
That is, it has replaced the ideals of the country with 
those of the city. The people of the country measure 
rural life in terms of the city. In dress, social life, 
recreation, home life, the country counts progress as an 
approximation to city standards. 

All this must be changed or our national founda- 
tions will be undermined. We must have a country 
life in every way satisfying, happy, and remunerative 
or our Republic cannot endure. 

What We Mean by " Rural " 

By " rural " we mean any community of whatever 
size whose outlook is dominantly agricultural. This 
might include some towns of five thousand or more, 
while suburban villages of one thousand or more could 
be classed as urban. The United States census draws 
the line between city and country at twenty-five hun- 
dred, but this, while convenient, cannot replace the 
really very irregular boundary. This applies equally 
to churches. Some in towns of more than twenty-five 
hundred are largely dependent on a rural constituency, 
while in much smaller places the membership is mostly 
city suburbanites. 

However the country may be depleted in population 
in spots, and especially in people who may help most 
to build up a community, yet throughout the whole 



70 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

rural area there is no lack of people. In 1880, in com- 
munities of twenty-five hundred or less, we had thirty- 
five and one third millions, and in 19 10 nearly fifty 
millions. The increase in the decade ending in 19 10 
was 1 1.2 per cent. The farm directly supports almost 
half our citizens, and nearly half our children are born 
and brought up there. 

The depletion of the country by removals to the 
city has probably about ceased. That is, city growth 
is now largely due to immigration and the birth-rate. 1 

Country Life Possibilities 

The country is not to set itself over against the city; 
both are interdependent. It is, however, to have a 
self-respecting life of its own which with all men will 
rank with that of the city. This will reduce the ques- 
tion of residence, urban or rural, to one of personal 
choice. 

Granting all this, it will at once be seen that the 
difference between urban and rural life is not one of 
people, but of organization. In fact, people of the 
country rank in possibilities above city dwellers. But 
this matter of the organization of rural life is a field 
so wide and difficult as to challenge the highest gifts 
of our best people everywhere. It means a new agri- 
culture, a new rural school, and a new rural church. 
These three are inseparable. Decadent agriculture 
means inferior schools and churches. An inferior 
school means the moving out of progressive families. 

1 For these and other facts see Fiske, The Challenge of the 
Country, chapters I, II. 



THE NEW COUNTRY CHURCH 71 

An inferior church means low morals and a lack of 
adequate life motives. These three at low ebb mean 
economic, mental, and moral desolation. The nation 
and states are becoming fully alive to the necessary 
conservation of rural life. 

An Awakened Government 

Liberal national land grants and annual appropria- 
tions to state agricultural colleges are bringing these 
institutions to a level of efficiency shared by few 
agencies anywhere. Recent large appropriations show 
a quickened sense of emergency extension work. The 
state now carries the agricultural college to the farm- 
ing community and stays for a week. It goes out to 
individual farms. It will there seek out the last de- 
crepit fruit tree and prescribe a cure. We now have 
the county agricultural superintendent. He is land 
doctor and physician at large for the farmers' material 
ills. One county adds to its superintendency a trained 
woman to lead in household economics. The state, 
through its persistent propaganda of soil salvation, 
sets a pace for the church in soul salvation. 

GOOD-BY TO THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE 

The present old-style country school will ere long 
be on the scrap-heap. It educates indifferently or in 
terms of the town. The new curriculum is not less 
broad, but it walks and talks in the open fields. It 
takes account of stars and old civilizations and moss- 
grown languages, but it also helps us to know every- 



72. THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

day growing things and what concerns folks now and 
what the animals and birds are saying. 

The modern rural school introduces the child to na- 
ture, and gets him on such intimate terms with her 
that she imparts to him the wonder-secrets of world 
life, and opens his eyes and ears to a thousand sights 
and sounds which will so transfigure the open country 
that for him to be away from it is to live in exile. The 
consolidated country school is coming as swift and 
sure as springtime. For one to connect up with the 
currents which make for the new agriculture and the 
new country school is to be jerked out of a groove 
and set going in an orbit. Such a risk is marked 
" dangerous " for those who so revere the old ways 
that they are happier to die on the junk-heap. This, 
however, is the last generation that will speak in polite 
terms of that choice. 

As prophets of this new century we do well to meas- 
ure the enormous governmental push behind the farm 
and rural school, that we may estimate the push neces- 
sary to save the country church from stranding, — from 
being in the next ten years the most belated institution 
of the countryside. It will not be that, for God's 
people will put it at the front. This will be done by 
noble exploits and as heroic leadership as ever marked 
the heavenly argonauts in pioneering days. 

The Church the Crown of Country Life 

Leaders in agriculture and education view with sym- 
pathetic solicitude the future of the country church, 
for they know that better farms and better schools 



THE NEW COUNTRY CHURCH 73 

cannot alone furnish the crowning motive and ideal 
of life. Only the church of God can do that; and 
to fill this splendid office she must be there, in pro- 
gram, equipment, leadership, and strength, holding her 
place in the van. 

How shall this be done when she cannot command 
the vast resources of the state which stand back of 
her handmaids, — agriculture and the school ? It shall 
be done, first of all, by the country preacher. He will 
see in his task the biggest God-commissioned enter- 
prise of this generation. With slender means he may 
hew his way as did the prophets and all great souls of 
the centuries. The fact that he does this is his cre- 
dential. A man who in poverty thinks he cannot thus 
achieve has likewise his credential in his failure. He 
is not one of the elect. Foreordination is full half 
human grit. And how will he achieve? First, by 
informing himself. The literature is knee-deep. 
There is a long list of books. Not that he needs at 
first to read them all. If he is a beginner, on applica- 
tion, his home missionary office will name for him a 
half dozen inexpensive books which, together, will 
open up the new agriculture and rural school as re- 
lated to the new rural church. But in this work we 
counsel the broadest cooperation. If the grange or the 
consolidated school be effectively operating, let him 
find wherein his church may fail to be abreast of the 
new countryside creation. Above all let the preachers 
of a countryside form a study unit, dividing the three- 
fold subject in such a way that each pastor is to head 
up a particular department and lead in it. The coun- 



74 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

tryside is one, and when more than one homogeneous 
church is there, they must cooperate in all that makes 
for essential unity or prove obstructors of the King's 
highway. 

These pastors, by communicating with their state 
agricultural college and state educational headquarters, 
will find how alert and ready are these agencies to 
cooperate with them in the introduction of better agri- 
culture and better schools. This mining and sapping 
must of course be done without advertising. To 
preach directly on these themes might defeat a good 
purpose. Yet, after all study and planning, the pastors 
of a community must make their own program and 
work it themselves. The leadership and helpers 
should be indigenous. 

To assume that the country pastor can be less able 
in the pulpit and less fertile in resources than the city 
pastor is to confess ignorance on the whole subject. 
No audiences better know preaching when they hear 
it or respond more readily to sane leadership than 
those whose houses of worship adjoin open fields. 
For years to come our leadership, religious and na- 
tional, will come from the country. We must see to 
it that this source of life to our nation, which in turn 
leads the world, is kept at its best. Home mission 
boards can do no better than to back picked men for 
rural churches, financially and inspirationally, until 
their work is self-supporting, as thus it may be. 

We not only go back to the farm for the necessities 
of life, but from the beginning there has been a sanc- 
tity in soil. Man was started an agriculturist. The 



ALLIES OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 75 

Old Testament is a farmer's book. Amos was a man 
of cattle. The divine Christ, while he beheld the city, 
was a man of the country, and in his sermons are 
landscape pictures of rolling fields and trees and living 
water. There goes the farmer with swinging tread, 
broadcasting seed, and the birds follow in flocks. 
Growing things are there, mustard plants, briers, grass, 
and wild flowers. Yonder hillside is flecked with 
sheep, while near at hand is a farmyard where a cluck- 
ing hen covers her chickens. All is framed in the 
morning and the evening sky from which the preacher 
reads the signs of fair or stormy weather. It is all 
there, and more, and when we may restore to the 
preacher of city or country the Master's rural note and 
outdoor imagery — we shall help a weary world to be 
young again, and life will be springtime. 



THE ALLIES OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

{Report of Committee) 

Albert E. Roberts, Chairman, John Alexander, 
Kenyon L. Butterfield, Thomas N. Carver, 
Jessie Field, A. A. Heald, A. A. Hyde, Edward 
Van Alstyne, D. C. Drew. 

The allies of the country church are many, and 
may be divided as follows : 

I. — Those organizations that are an integral part of 
church organisations } such as 



76 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 



The Sunday-school. 

The Young People's Societies, Junior and Senior. 

The Men's Brotherhood. 

The Missionary Societies, Home and Foreign. 

Girls' Friendly Society. 

Ladies' Aid Societies, etc. 



II. — The national and state organizations which in- 
stitute, supervise, and reenforce these organizations, 
such as 

i. The International Sunday-school Association and 
the State Sunday-school Association. 

2. The United Society of Christian Endeavor and 
kindred societies; State and County Young People's 
Unions and Guilds, etc. 

3. National and State denominational brotherhood 
movements, including Brotherhood of St. Andrew. 

4. National Women's and Men's Home and For- 
eign Missionary Boards. 

5. Denominational Social Service bodies; Federa- 
tion of Churches, etc. 

6. American Sunday-school Union, etc. 

III. — Those organizations, not an integral part of 
the local church, but which are Christian in objective 
and which are by their own rules controlled by church 
people, such as 

1. Women's Christian Temperance Union, local, 
state, county, territorial, and national. 

2. Young Men's Christian Association, local, 
county, state, and national. 



ALLIES OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 77 

3. Young Women's Christian Association, county, 
territorial, and national. 

4. State Bible Societies. 

5. Missionary Education Movement. 

6. Laymen's Missionary Movement. 

IV. — Those organizations which have the com- 
munity service ideal but which are not distinctively 
under church auspices, such as 

1. The Grange, local, state, and national. 

2. Village Improvement Society. 

3. The Board of Trade, or business organizations. 

4. Libraries. 

5. Schools. 

6. County Farm Bureaus. 

7. State Agricultural Colleges, extension service. 

8. Societies for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 
county and state. 

9. Playground Associations. 

10. State Boards of Health. 



11 
12 
13 
14 
15 
16. 



Medical Society. 

Free Public Library Commissions. 

Civic Leagues. 

Civic Federations. 

Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls. 

County Agricultural Associations. 



The functions of I. and II. are generally thoroughly 
understood; but there is without doubt a need for a 
clearer definition of relationship, program, and plan 
of cooperation of those agencies included in III. and 



;8 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

IV. Your Committee recommends that there be com- 
piled methods of community service which the allies 
of the country church have developed and found prac- 
tical. It may lead up into an attractive printed book- 
let prepared by this Committee under the auspices of 
the Federal Council, which will give definite help and 
information in these directions. There are some pub- 
lications already available which the Young Men's 
Christian Association, the Young Women's Christian 
Association, and other organizations working in co- 
operation with the church have used with success in 
work with boys and young men and girls and young 
women which would be helpful to country pastors, as 
well as to all others who are interested in work in 
country churches. 

Every organization which can be considered as an 
ally of the country church has a certain definite field 
of its own in which it is more or less of a specialist 
serving all the churches. There are many plans which 
have been inaugurated with success by the various 
agencies, such as those mentioned above, — the Mis- 
sionary Education Movement, the Laymen's Mission- 
ary Movement, the Women's Christian Temperance 
Union, and others. For instance, there should be in- 
cluded in some way and be made available to church 
leaders material on the relationship of the church in 
the country to the boys and young men and the girls 
and young women in the community; the kind of op- 
portunities for service which they should have in the 
church; the kind of Bible study that would appeal to 
them; and the kind of recreation they should be of- 



ALLIES OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 79 

fered; and how to develop leaders for all of these 
activities. 

In the report on " The Function, Policy, and Pro- 
gram of the Country Church " it is stated that " the 
church should regard itself as the servant of the en- 
tire community, and should be deeply concerned with 
all legitimate agencies in the community. ... It 
should suggest and inspire rather than instigate and 
supervise, but it may undertake any new service for 
which there is not other provision." 1 

This report also suggests that the Rural Young 
Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's 
Christian Association, the Young People's Societies, 
the Missionary Education Movement, and similar or- 
ganized allies of the country church, should be util- 
ized, encouraged, and supported in their work by the 
country church. This includes, of course, financial as 
well as moral support, and sometimes the use of 
church buildings for these allies of the country church. 

Granted that this is a true conception of the church's 
relationship to its allies, the twofold question arises: 
first, as to how the church can help the allies; second, 
as to how the allies can help the church. 

Lest there be any misunderstanding in regard to our 
position, let us say frankly that we believe the church 
to be the vitalizing and fundamental agency for rural 
redirection. From it should emanate the inspiration 
and enthusiasm, not only to suggest and sometimes 
initiate all good work, but to support it. Notwith- 
standing the weaknesses and errors with which the 

1 See page 120. 



So THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

country church is charged by many church leaders as 
well as critics from outside, it is still the one organiza- 
tion that persists in most communities, and it has, or 
should have, the attitude of helpfulness toward every 
agency for good. Its position should be, not what can 
we get from the allies that will help us, but how can 
we utilize and energize these allies to their highest 
efficiency and for the extension of the kingdom of 
God. 

It should, therefore, encourage its men, if they have 
special fitness for leadership of boys and young men, 
to support and work with the Young Men's Christian 
Association, the county Farm Bureau, the Agricul- 
tural College, and other men's organizations. In the 
same way it should encourage the women members 
of the church, if they have capacity, to promote very 
earnestly such community enterprises as the Young 
Women's Christian Association, the Women's Chris- 
tian Temperance Union, the Grange, arts and crafts 
guilds, playgrounds, etc. 

These specialized agencies, if properly used, encour- 
aged, and supported will yield large dividends in the 
vitality of the church life. 

On the other hand, these agencies may be of tre- 
mendous direct help in the promotion of church activi- 
ties. The handbook, already referred to, may be used 
by an energetic and progressive pastor, Sunday-school 
superintendent, or leader of young people to splendid 
advantage, but the largest service that can be rendered 
to the church by its allies is the service of suggestion 
or demonstration. 



ALLIES OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 81 

What the country community needs at the present 
time more than anything else is a demonstration of 
some of the fine theories that have been advanced in 
the past few years. 

It is generally conceded that the solidarity of the 
community is to be greatly desired in the country. 
The community approach to the problem of rural re- 
direction can often best be made by an interdenomina- 
tional agency. A demonstration of community-wide 
play festivals, civic improvements, picnics, surveys, so- 
cials, etc., is the finest incentive toward unity of effort 
in things distinctly spiritual. 

The activities promoted by the allies of the country 
church are in themselves worth while, but the service 
of suggestion which they render is of far greater sig- 
nificance. Not the least important in this service of 
suggestion is a demonstration of the possibility of 
community cooperation or getting together. Many 
local church leaders, because of repeated failure of 
church cooperation, have come to believe that com- 
munity cooperation is impossible. 

A practical demonstration of community coopera- 
tion, in a town clean-up, led to the uniting of two rural 
churches, the improving of the parsonage, the con- 
struction of a parish house, and the securing of an ef- 
ficient pastor who was a real community leader as well 
as pastor of a church which attracted and held the 
interest and cooperation of practically all the boys and 
men of the community. 

A boys' group under the auspices of an ally in an- 
other town brought together two churches that for 



82 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

over forty years had been a strong divisive factor in 
community life. 

In another community an ally promoted a survey in 
which men who had been religiously antagonistic for 
years were brought together, resulting in the awaken- 
ing of a local initiative to get together on the part of 
church leaders hitherto regarded as impossible in mat- 
ters pertaining to church union or federation. 

The promotion of interdenominational conferences 
for older boys and girls, where world-wide vision of 
the Kingdom are presented by broad-minded men and 
women and where the basis of appeal is Christian 
service, is doing much to produce a type of men and 
women in the next generation who, with no less a 
religious motive, will stand for a more timely and 
practical application of Christianity to the problems 
of the country church than their fathers could possibly 
have done. It is obvious that no one church could 
efficiently promote and direct such conferences, but 
allies of the church are serving all the churches most 
effectively in this way. 

Authorities on country life everywhere agree that 
its greatest need is leadership. This is conspicuously 
true of the country church; and with this thing in 
mind one of the allies of the country church has 
brought out a text-book. The Challenge of the Country, 
written by Professor Fiske of Oberlin. In this book 
the opportunities for sendee in the country and the 
challenge for the best of leadership are set forth in 
a most attractive study. Six thousand of these books 
were in use in classes promoted by the Young Men's 



ALLIES OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 83 

Christian Association and the Young Women's Chris- 
tian Association in the colleges and the universities last 
year, and, furthermore, at the Student Conferences 
which are attended by representative student leaders 
from all the colleges and universities, normal classes 
were conducted in the study of this book by some of 
the best rural life leaders of the country. The object 
aimed at was to send back to the colleges young men 
and young women qualified to teach this course. 

It is not strange that at the close of these confer- 
ences many country young men and young women have 
said that they have never looked upon the country 
before as a field of service for a life-work. The 
writer knows at least seven young men who are pre- 
paring themselves for the rural ministry as a result of 
one such course covering a period of ten days in the 
summer of 191 5. They are entering the rural min- 
istry with the same enthusiasm that has characterized 
the thousands of the very flower of our American 
colleges and universities who have enlisted for service 
in the foreign field in the last ten or fifteen years. 

The allies of the country church have served and 
will serve many denominations in this way much more 
effectively than they could be served otherwise. 

One of the problems of pastors and religious leaders 
is to connect up with the city churches the large num- 
ber of boys and young men who are leaving the coun- 
try for the city. An effectual system known as the 
Corresponding Membership System has been developed 
by one of the allies of the country church, whereby 
prominent laymen act as corresponding members in the 



84 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

rural communities and on blanks specially prepared 
inform the state offices when young men are leaving 
their homes to begin life in the city or the college. 
Immediately on receiving this information the state 
office gets it into the hands of the representative in the 
place in which the young man is going, and at once 
he is looked up and made acquainted with helpful 
friends, and if possible representatives of his own de- 
nomination. The same thing is done by another ally 
of the country church for the young women. 

No one denomination could do this work effectually, 
but the allies of the country church serve all denomina- 
tions. There are many accounts of young men and 
y< >ung women helped at the very time they needed help 
most — just at the beginning of their life in the city 
or the large town — that read like romances. Through 
training institutes and summer schools and conferences 
conducted under the auspices of the allies a tremendous 
service is being rendered the country church, for in 
these gatherings thousands of young men and women 
are seeing the vision of the possibility of service and 
many who have been of little value as leaders are be- 
coming tremendous assets. 

One of the greatest needs of the country church is 
to protect the efficient young pastors who, having given 
their lives to service in the country, are constantly beset 
with appeals to leave their charges and go to the city. 
It is difficult to make many church leaders see that one 
of the greatest handicaps of the church in the past has 
been that it has been used as a stepping-stone or 
training-school for the city. Only recently an unusu- 



ALLIES OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 85 

ally effective young pastor appealed to us to cooperate 
with him in protecting himself from the good-will of 
his friends. I know of no finer service that the allies 
can render the country church than to encourage 
young men not only to enter the rural pastorate but 
to remain in it until the community is brought to a high 
state of efficiency. 

The allies recognize the fact that life has been taken 
out of the country; and nothing will bring the church, 
the home, and the school to its own like the reinvest- 
ment of life. There are thousands of ways in which 
the allies can and do help the country church. There 
are places naturally where at times what is intended 
for supplementing looks like supplanting and coopera- 
tion is mistaken for competition, but most of the allies 
with which we are familiar recognize the church as 
the fundamental agency, and as such desire to give 
it the very best help and cooperation. 

What the Master said with reference to the life of 
the individual holds true regarding the country 
church. That church which loses its life in hearty 
cooperation with these legitimate allies will find its 
larger life in increased influence and power in the 
community; and it is equally true that the allies which 
desire to be of the largest possible use in rural redirec- 
tion can never attain their greatest efficiency without 
the recognition of the church as the final source of 
inspiration in all true Christian leadership. 



86 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

THE COUNTRY CHURCH AND THE 
COUNTRY GIRL 

Jessie Field 

In these days we are coming to know that the chance 
for an abundant life for women and girls in the coun- 
try is at the very foundation of the possibility of 
making the country the best place in which to live. 
A country girl, when asked if she liked the country, 
replied: " Yes, the country is a line place to live — 
when the work is done." 

Many a farmer rents his farm and moves to town 
on account of his wife and daughters. Surely there 
is no point in raising more corn or better stock and 
getting more money from farming unless that money 
be used for better houses and churches and schools, — 
for more life in the country community. 

So the country church faces the big opportunity of 
service to country girls, — the chance to bring to them 
the chance for expression of their whole lives. 

To do this the church must create the motive spirit- 
power of leadership in teachers of schools and of 
Sunday-schools and must work sympathetically with 
every movement for scientific home making, for light- 
ening the work in farmhouses, and for the bringing 
in of music and literature, and the right kind of recrea- 
tion and social life. The country church should use 
to the utmost in its community the County Young 
Women's Christian Association, calling on the county 
secretary as a leader of girls, who is trained for the 



COUNTRY CHURCH AND COUNTRY GIRL 87 

work, who understands girls, who is in touch with 
present-day resources for girls, and who can help in 
making Jesus Christ real in their every-day lives. 

Certain it is that the country church that opens the 
door for the biggest and best chances to its girls will 
find added life for the present and for future years. 
It will inspire the country girl to enter into the 
breadth and sweep of this progressive ideal : 

I am glad I live in the country. I love its beauty 
and its spirit. I rejoice in the things I can do as a 
country girl for my home and my neighborhood. 

I believe I can share in the beauty around me; in 
the fragrance of the orchards in spring, in the weight 
of the ripe wheat at harvest, in the morning songs of 
birds, and in the glow of the sunset on the far horizon. 
I want to express this beauty in my own life as nat- 
urally and happily as the wild rose blooms by the 
roadside. 

I believe I can have a part in the courageous spirit 
of the country. This spirit has entered into the brook 
in our pasture. The stones placed in its way call forth 
its strength and add to its strength a song. It dwells 
in the tender plants as they burst the seed-cases that 
imprison them and push through the dark earth to the 
light. It sounds in the nestling notes of the meadow- 
lark. With this courageous spirit I, too, can face the 
hard things of life with gladness. 

I believe there is much I can do in my country home. 
Through studying the best way to do my every-day 
work I can find joy in common tasks done well. 
Through loving comradeship I can help bring into my 



88 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

home the happiness and peace that are always so near 
us in God's out-of-door world. Through such a home 
I can help make real to all who pass that way their 
highest ideal of country life. 

I believe my love and loyalty for my country home 
should reach out in service to that larger home that we 
call our neighborhood. I would join with the people 
who live there in true friendliness. I would whole- 
heartedly give my best to further all that is being done 
for a better community. I would have all that I think 
and say and do help to unite country people near and 
far in that great Kingdom of Love for Neighbors 
which the Master came to establish — the Master who 
knew and cared for country ways and country folks. 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH AND RURAL 
ACTIVITIES 

W. 0. Thompson 

The topic assigned to me was with the understand- 
ing that I should present to you some conditions arising 
out of the activities of the federal and state govern- 
ments in rural life. Briefly, let me survey the three 
great activities of the federal government. 

First, the passage of the Act of 1862, commonly 
knowm as the Morrill Act, or the Land Grant Act, 
which provided for the endowment, support, and 
maintenance of at least one college in each state in 
the Union, where the real object should be, without 



COUNTRY CHURCH AND RURAL ACTIVITIES 89 

excluding other scientific and classical studies, and 
including military tactics, to teach such branches of 
learning as are related to agricultural and mechanic 
arts in such manner as the legislatures of the states 
may respectfully prescribe, in order to promote the 
liberal and practical education of the industrial classes 
in the several pursuits and professions in life. The 
donation of public lands to these institutions was to 
provide a permanent endowment which would remain 
unimpaired. As a result of this act there is now at 
least one College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in 
each state in the Union. 

This act was supplemented in 1890 by what is 
known as the second Morrill Act, which provided an 
additional income of $25,000 annually to each state. 
The act was further amended by the so-called Nelson 
Amendment of 1908, which increased the sum pro- 
vided in the act of 1890 to a maximum of $50,000 per 
annum. Thus there is given to each state for its 
agricultural college the original endowment of public 
lands and $50,000 annually. In response to this 
endowment by the government the states have pro- 
vided the buildings and in many instances several 
times the revenue as provided by the federal govern- 
ment. The result is that the colleges of agriculture 
throughout the country are among the best endowed 
and most amply equipped institutions in the country. 

Second, the Hatch Act of 1887, which provided for 
the establishment of Agricultural Experiment Sta- 
tions in each state in the Union. This act provided 
an annual appropriation of $15,000. An amendatory 



90 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

act in 1906, known as the Adams Act, doubled this 
appropriation, making the present maximum of 
$30,000 annually. 

These institutions have been engaged in scientific 
research upon the problems underlying agricultural 
progress. They have published a large number of 
important scientific documents that constitute the 
basis of a great agricultural library for all agricultural 
institute >ns. 

Third, the Smith-Lever Agricultural Extension Act, 
which was approved May 8. 19 14. This provided for 
an initial appropriation of $10,000 to each state in 
the Union, and for an additional sum of $600,000 for 
the second year, and thereafter an increase of 
$500,000 annually until it should be a maximum of 
$4,100,000 in addition to the original appropriation 
J i So, 000. 

The purpose of this act was to bring, through co- 
operative methods between the federal government 
and the several agricultural colleges, the results of 
scientific agricultural research to the home of the indi- 
vidual farmer. The method of instruction is through 
extension schools, — field demonstrations to persons 
not resident in or attending agricultural colleges. For 
one hundred years we have been sending our chil- 
dren to school. It is now proposed to send the best 
results of the school back to the home by way of prac- 
tical demonstration in the great fields of agriculture 
and home economics. It should be added that in 
order to secure the increased appropriations provided 
in the extension act each state must meet the appro- 



COUNTRY CHURCH AND RURAL ACTIVITIES 91 

priation of the federal government by an equal appro- 
priation for such purposes. This will result in a mini- 
mum of nearly $10,000,000 annually expended in this 
demonstration work which will be carried into every 
nook and corner of the rural districts of the United 
States of America. No more far-reaching act has 
been passed in a generation. 

To cite a few instances by way of illustration, I 
may say that the state of Ohio under this act reaches 
its maximum within five years from the present date. 
There will be available for extension work about 
$350,000 annually. In a neighboring state like In- 
diana it will be not far from $275,000; in Illinois, 
not far from $375,000; in a state like Alabama, not 
far from $300,000. The distribution of this money 
is upon a percentage basis, based upon the ratio of 
the rural population of a given state to the total rural 
population of the entire country. 

Aside from these three great activities it must be 
remembered that the Department of Agriculture at 
Washington receives annually not far from $20,- 
000,000, and that its activities are organized in the 
interests of the agriculture of the country, including 
research and the special consideration of regional and 
nation-wide problems. 

What now of the significance of these things? To 
this conference let me say, first of all, that the admin- 
istration of these funds in all the departments sug- 
gested above has an immediate bearing upon the prob- 
lems of rural life. Our colleges of agriculture, our 
stations, and the Department at Washington recog- 



92 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

nize the social phase of rural life, the economic phase 
and educational phase, and in fact every interest that 
bears upon the large problem of rural maintenance 
and improvement. 

The Roosevelt Country Life Committee made an 
elaborate study of rural life conditions. Every col- 
lege and station in the country to-day is in sympathy 
with the spirit of progress in that commission's re- 
port and will move forward in every field offering 
support for agricultural betterment. We must not, 
therefore, conceive of these institutions as teaching or 
scientific institutions devoted exclusively to soil fer- 
tility, plant production, or animal husbandry. They 
are, as a matter of fact, educational and scientific 
institutions having within their scope economic, so- 
cial, and educational problems. These activities will 
continue and will arouse a large amount of rural 
organization. The men and women engaged in agri- 
cultural extension in any and all of its forms, includ- 
ing farmers' institutes and county agent work, will be 
among the best representatives of American agriculture 
and thoroughly devoted to the social and moral better- 
ment of our community life. 

Associating as I do with educational organizations 
of various kinds, I do not hesitate to say in this pres- 
ence that I find no body of educators anywhere pos- 
sessed of a more profound moral earnestness nor more 
thoroughly devoted to the moral and spiritual welfare 
of the people than the group of men represented in 
the Association of Agricultural Colleges and Experi- 
ment Stations. 



COUNTRY CHURCH AND RURAL ACTIVITIES 93 

These facts seem to me to constitute the greatest 
opportunity of the generation for the church to co- 
operate with existing agencies in the accomplishment 
of spiritual, social, and moral results. In fact, we 
may say that this situation is a substantial challenge 
to the church. To lay hold of an opportunity pre- 
sented without expense to the church would seem to 
be an imperative duty. 

In presenting this urgent plea for the opportunity 
before us, let me impress upon you that no fear need 
be entertained about any controversy with the state 
or government in these great issues. Our coopera- 
tion will be most cordially welcomed. The people 
engaged in these enterprises are already, to a very 
large degree, the people now interested in our rural 
schools and rural churches. The one thing we need 
to guard against is the development of any tendency 
for a narrow or sectarian use of this opportunity. 
The state, in my humble opinion, is profoundly inter- 
ested in religion and the peaceable fruits of religion. 
" Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a re- 
proach to any people." The state, however, is not 
interested in the perpetuation of particular forms of 
religion. It owns no antagonism to any church or 
creed, but the state, separate from the church in this 
country, may not be brought into the controversial 
sides of religion or church. Let us therefore regard 
this great opportunity as one freighted with splendid 
possibilities, provided we may lay aside the differ- 
ences, however important they may be, and put our 
emphasis upon the things upon which we agree. For 



94 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

after all these must be the fundamental and vitally 
important things. 

No such nation-wide extension movement in the 
interest of agriculture has ever been projected as is 
now in operation in the United States under the three 
great acts, as suggested above. In my opinion no 
such great opportunity has ever been given the 
church to organize properly the spiritual forces of 
the rural community in the interest of the Kingdom. 
Let us hope and pray that this conference and subse- 
quent conferences may open the way to a large utiliza- 
tion of this opportunity and to the speeding of the 
things that pertain to life and godliness. 



MEMOIRS OF A RURAL CHURCH 

Hubert C. Herring 

I shall bring to you certain memories of a country 
church in the Central West some forty years ago, with 
their suggestions for the rural religious problems of 
to-day. It was a church belonging to the best type of 
its time. Round about were fertile farms tilled by 
pioneer stock from New England and New York. 
The church building stood on a hill in the place of 
honor. On another hill near by was the district 
schoolhouse. The traditional interest in education 
was strong. Large numbers of the boys and girls 
were sent away to academy and college. There was 



MEMOIRS OF A RURAL CHURCH 95 

a keen interest in the problems of the larger world. 
Among the things of which these memories speak are 
these : 

1. The influence of this church was potent. It 
was not a large affair. A congregation of sixty was 
the maximum. It did not run at high pressure. It 
continued to draw home mission funds after it should 
have been self-supporting. The thrifty farmers who 
supported it were never zealous to pay more than 
they were obliged to. The casual observer would 
have said it was only an incident in the life of the 
community. But to a considerable group of men and 
women now in middle life scattered here and there 
over the earth no proof of its power is required. 
They know that all life holds for them here or here- 
after has its roots back in that little church. 

2. These memories confirm strongly the constant 
assertion of students of rural life that the country 
church suffers from lack of the cooperative spirit. It 
was never easy to get the community to work together. 
There were many feuds and factions. The sectarian 
spirit caused some families to attend church outside 
the parish. Individualism ran to seed. I cannot re- 
call that ministers or church officers showed any clear 
perception of the duty of the church to act as a unify- 
ing force. 

3. This church illustrated also the evils of a non- 
resident ministry. At its organization the pastor 
lived in the country, cultivated a small piece of land, 
and drove on Sundays to the village for a second 
service. But the next pastor and all who came after 



96 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

preferred to live within sound of the locomotive, and 
even if they had not so chosen, the village church 
would doubtless have insisted upon it. The inevitable 
consequences followed. The minister who came to 
preach on Sunday was in effect a stranger. Espe- 
cially was he almost entirely outside the life of the 
young, lie could have little share in the neighbor- 
hood life. Xor, if the truth must be told, was he 
as a rule the sort of man who could have taken de- 
cided leadership even if living in the commimity, 
being too academic and not human enough. 

4. In like way the experience of this country parish 
corroborates all that is said about the church as a 
community center. There was not much definite pur- 
pose to make it such. But, because there was no 
other place to meet, the debating club met in the church 
building, the singing school was held there, the social 
gatherings were largely there. Even the Sunday 
services had a community quality as affording the 
only time when people had opportunity to talk over 
cr< ps, taxes, school interests, and politics. Even 
these small community services were a great blessing 
both to the people around and reciprocally to the 
church. 

But it is easy to see, looking back upon the situa- 
tion, wdiat boundless possibilities in this line lay 
within easy reach of that church. Under competent, 
broad-visioned leadership, with the ample materials 
available, it could have shaped the entire community 
life. Particularly in the educational field it touched 
only the fringe of its possibilities. In sex hygiene, 



THE LARGER BEXZOXIA PARISH 97 

in ideals of life-work, in acquaintance with great char- 
acters, in civic patriotism, and in manners as well as 
in personal morals and personal religion, it could have 
shaped lives intrusted to it. 

5. Last of all, this church has illustrated in the 
most complete and painful way what happens to the 
rural church or any other church which does not build 
its life on a broad democratic basis. When the young 
people began to go to the cities and the old people to 
retire to the villages for their last years, the farms 
were taken by families of various races and faiths. 
Before long the old supporters were all gone. It 
would have been a task sufficiently hard to keep the 
church going even if its history had been of the wisest. 
But, lacking hold upon the community at large, never 
having taught all the people to count it their church, 
it dwindled rapidly, and years ago its doors were 
closed. Of late some signs of hope have appeared. 
Services are held more or less regularly. But it is 
the mere ghost of its former self. Whether it can 
ever become what once it was so near being future 
years must tell. 



THE LARGER BENZONIA PARISH 

Harlow S. Mills 

I suppose I am asked to speak to-night because I 
represent a vigorous country church in the as yet but 



98 



THE CHURCH AXD COUNTRY LIFE 



partially developed region of northern Michigan. We 
call it " The Larger Benzonia Parish " because of its 
more recently extended territory. It is a kind of an 
" experiment station " where we are working out and 
demonstrating a method of country evangelization and 
rural betterment which promises to be successful, and 
which we hope may be profitably applied in many 
parts of the land. 

The conditions of the Benzonia field were specially 
favorable for such an experiment. The community 
was settled by a high-minded and earnest-hearted 
company of people from northern Ohio more than 
half a century ago. The Pilgrims did not bring to 
the New England coast a truer motive or a purer pur- 
pose than they. It was their object to plant in the 
northern Michigan wilderness Christian institutions. 
They were willing to put into the enterprise their 
lives and their fortunes. They stamped the com- 
munity which they founded with the impress of their 
ideals, and that stamp has persisted. Like Abraham, 
their first work after entering the promised land was 
to build an altar to Jehovah, and like him and their 
New England ancestors, they built it on the highest 
elevation they could find. One of the first things they 
did was to select a site for a church and school, and, 
standing under the tall beeches and maples, with hymn 
and prayer, to dedicate that high hilltop to the cause 
of Christian education. The church that they planted 
was the first in all the Grand Traverse region. It has 
now a membership of about three hundred in a village 
of seven hundred, and is the center of the religious 



THE LARGER BEXZOXIA PARISH 99 

and social life, not only of the village and the immedi- 
ate community, but also of the territory known as 
" The Larger Parish " — twelve miles long and ten 
miles wide. It has been the mother of churches, and 
now stands encircled by a number of younger organ- 
izations which are growing strong and sturdy under 
her cherishing influence. 

For more than fifty years this church has had the 
central place in that community. The village life has 
clustered about it, and from it have gone forth those 
influences that have been most potent in molding the 
character of the people, and in giving them their ideals. 
A fine body of Christian men and women have been 
trained up, sturdy and strong, with well-grounded 
principles and large ideas, and to them more than to 
anything else is due the work which has been done. 
They are splendid followers, they work well together, 
and are ready to cooperate in any sane movement to 
promote the kingdom of God. 

For fifteen years I worked away in this, my country 
parish. They were happy years of glad, harmonious 
work, and I was satisfied with my work. Though 
remote from the great centers of population and liv- 
ing in a small village with people of very modest 
means, I had never been visited by that restless feel- 
ing that spoils the peace and mars the work of so 
many ministers. There was a good understanding be- 
tween myself and my people. 

At the close of this period, however, I was called 
to pass through deep affliction. My home was broken 
up with a sudden stroke. Into the dark valley of 



ioo THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

sorrow my people accompanied me as far as they 
were able to go, and the effect was to unite ns with 
bonds that were very strong and tender. Every home 
in all the parish was mine. All the children belonged 
to me. There was a chair for me at every fireside, 
and a plate at every table. 

But as the years went by there came some tempting 
opportunities to engage in work elsewhere. I was not 
without my ambitions and aspirations. I wanted to 
fill out the full measure of my ability and do my best 
work; and when some opportunities came that made 
the little country parish seem by comparison rather 
small and meager, I was not proof against them. I 
spent some weeks in considering the propositions 
fr< in the city and the state, and finally refused them. 
I could not bring myself to sever my connection with 
those to whom I had been so long and closely related. 
The personal tie was too strong, and I decided to 
remain with my people. 

With the decision came a thorough heart-searching. 
It marked a turning-point in my spiritual history. I 
was impressed with the thought that, if it was God's 
will that I should remain in my present work, it must 
be for a special purpose. Things could not be in the 
future as they had been in the past. If it was the 
Lord's will that I should remain in that country 
parish, there must be some work there which it was 
worth while for me to do; some work that in some 
degree, at least, w r ould approach in importance the 
large opportunities offered by the city and the state. 
Was there anything to be done among those hills and 



THE LARGER BENZONIA PARISH 101 

in those rapidly disappearing forests that could fire a 
man's ambitions and satisfy his high aspirations ? 

Just here the vision came. At first a whole town- 
ship was revealed as a possible parish. Then the vision 
expanded until it took in another township and parts 
of three or four more. It became plain that almost 
half a county was tributary to the church, that five 
hundred families and twenty-five hundred people were 
waiting for its ministry. It dawned upon my mental 
vision that I was called upon to be the pastor of all 
these people, and that the Benzonia Church was re- 
sponsible for them all; that they had a right to look 
to us for service and help, and that if we failed to 
give it we should be unfaithful to our Master and 
recreant to our trust. Then I said, " Here is some- 
thing worth doing. Here may be wrought out an 
experiment in country evangelization and rural better- 
ment that may help to arrest the downward trend that 
has become so alarming in these days. It was for 
this that God kept me here. If I can make this vision 
a reality, I need not pine for a larger field. If I can 
help others to see the vision, and inspire them with 
enthusiasm to make it real in larger fields than mine, 
I shall never be sorry that I stayed by the stuff." 

The church had for many years been much inter- 
ested in both home and foreign missions. In fact 
those who were well acquainted with the churches of 
the state have often said that in proportion to its re- 
sources, its gifts were larger than those of any other 
church. Not only did its members give money, but 
they gave their own sons and daughters to carry the 



102 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

gospel to less favored regions. Many of the young 
women of the church had gone to teach in home 
mission schools, and there came a day when my fa- 
vorite niece, brought up in my home as an active and 
useful member of the church, beloved by all, was con- 
secrated with solemn services in the little church on 
the hilltop to the foreign work, and was sent forth 
with the prayers and blessings of all the people to 
represent them among the awakening millions of 
China. 

As I was sitting in my study one day, pondering 
upon these things, the absurdity of the situation came 
over me all at once. " Here we are, gathering money 
to send our sons and daughters to the distant parts of 
the earth, but we are doing absolutely nothing for 
scores of families almost within sound of our church 
bell. We are anxious to give the gospel to the mil- 
lions of other lands whom we have never seen, and 
never shall see; but we have not felt very much re- 
sponsibility for those who are separated from us by 
only a few miles. There are many families and hun- 
dreds of people within five or six miles of our church 
that are practically without the gospel as truly as are 
the Chinese or the South Sea islanders. We have 
made no systematic effort to interest them in these 
things." Then I heard the Master say: " These ye 
ought to have done, and not to have left the other 
undone." And then came the vision of the Larger 
Parish. I saw the church reaching out and touching 
tenderly, but effectively, all the people in the sur- 
rounding country. I saw every family in that wide 



THE LARGER BENZOXIA PARISH 103 

region tributary to the church. I saw the church 
laying systematic plans to carry the gospel to all 
these outlying neighborhoods. I began to think of all 
those people as my parishioners as truly as were those 
who lived near the church and who were members of 
it. In my own mind I annexed all the surrounding 
country and began to make plans for the evangeliza- 
tion and helping of all the people who dwelt therein. 
So under the stimulus of foreign missions the vision 
came of the work that could be done and should be 
done nearer home. 

The next thing was to bring the vision to the earth 
and to make it a reality. How was it to be done? 

The first thing was to make a survey of the field. 
I started out to visit all the families in this wide terri- 
tory. I tramped over the whole parish. I lived with 
the people and was often absent from my home for 
two or three days at a time, until there was scarcely 
a home in all that region where I was a stranger. 
This was most delightful and satisfying work. There 
was a welcome everywhere, and, almost without ex- 
ception the people seemed pleased to come in touch 
with the representative of the church. Such an op- 
portunity to get up close to the people is worth a score 
of sermons. This visiting tour occupied many weeks; 
in fact, a large part of the autumn months I spent 
in this way. I came to know the people as I had never 
known them before. My touch with them was warmer 
and closer. I came to think of them in a different 
way, and there was established between them and my- 
self a bond of sympathy that did not exist before. 



104 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

My task with the church in bringing it to get my 
point of view, to see the vision as I saw it and to 
cooperate with me in making it a reality, was not dif- 
ficult. The people were ready for the larger work, — 
at least they were ready to be made ready. 

All they needed was light and leading. This I un- 
dertook to give. 1 told them my vision of the Larger 
Parish. I held it up before them continually, preach- 
ing it on the Sabbath, and talking about it in the 
prayer-meeting. From week to week I could see the 
kindling flame of enthusiasm in the congregation. 
The people began to see the reasonableness of it. 
They began to feel some responsibility for it, some 
joy and hope, as the possibility of doing it dawned 
upon them. 

But how should we begin? How should we move 
out into this Larger Parish, and get hold of this 
greater work? I began to hold one meeting each 
week in some distant schoolhouse, taking with me 
some of my men. for I considered that the success of 
the work depended, not so much on what I said, as 
upon the attitude of the church toward it. The pres- 
ence of the men with me in these services greatly in- 
creased the effectiveness of the effort. I was a 
preacher, and was simply on my job. They repre- 
sented the church and proclaimed to the people in the 
outlying regions its attitude toward them. 

At first I had no definite thought of how the work 
w r ould develop. I simply started out to do what I 
could for the people in that wide territory. The need 
of a helper began to press heavily upon me. The 



THE LARGER BEXZONIA PARISH 105 

matter was brought before the representatives of the 
state work. The superintendent came and visited the 
field, and the result was such cooperation with the 
Home Missionary Society as enabled us to secure an 
assistant for our work. And as it developed, it was 
not long till another helper was needed, so that now 
the work is carried on by three men, each of them 
responsible for a certain portion of the territory. 
They work in most delightful harmony, and the fel- 
lowship which they have with one another is one of 
the best things about it. 

A fine example of what may be done in the way of 
denominational comity, when a really Christian spirit 
prevails, was shown on this field, and it did much to 
make the work of the Larger Parish possible. Two 
small Methodist churches within the territory men- 
tioned were exchanged for two Congregational 
churches of a similar grade in an adjoining county. 
This was worked through by the representatives of 
the two denominations, and with the churches them- 
selves without difficulty, leaving a free field for the 
Congregationalists in one county, and for the Metho- 
dists in the other. A commission was appointed con- 
sisting of a Methodist and a Congregationalist from 
a distant town, who appraised the properties belong- 
ing to the various churches and reported the basis of 
exchange. The Methodist man thought the Congre- 
gationalists ought to pay $250 to boot. The Congre- 
gational man thought the Methodists ought to pay a 
like sum. So they traded even, and every one was 
satisfied. If some such exchange could be made in 



106 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

many country neighborhoods, it would be a most 
happy arrangement, and one of the greatest hindrances 
to the progress of the kingdom of God would be 
removed. 

Having shown the plan in successful operation, I 
may speak of some methods used and some things 
done which show religious progress. This must be 
the crucial test of any church work. It must bring 
people into harmony with God and his truth. It must 
line them up on the side of Jesus Christ, or it cannot 
be said to be successful, however many other desirable 
things it may accomplish. Spiritual results cannot be 
tabulated, but a few things can be mentioned that 
show pr« egress. 

The w< >rk has been fairly well organized through- 
out the whole parish, and is moving on steadily in 
definite directions. 

There are now eleven points where regular Sunday 
services are held in this territory, which comprises one 
whole township and parts of five others. These 
services are held in one church, eight chapels, and two 
schoolhouses. Other points are asking for service, but 
with our present force no more w r ork can be under- 
taken. These preaching points are so arranged that 
no family with the exception of a few who live in one 
remote comer of the parish, need go more than a mile 
and a half to find a place of worship. The aggregate 
attendance on these services will average not far from 
six hundred in a population of twenty-five hundred, — - 
about one fourth of the population of the parish being 
present with some degree of regularity. There are 



THE LARGER BEXZOXIA PARISH 107 

three small country churches affiliated with the village 
church at Benzonia in carrying on this work, with a 
combined membership of about four hundred. Ten 
Sunday-schools are maintained within the parish with 
six hundred in attendance. The clerical force is com- 
posed of the pastor and his two assistants, and each 
of them preaches three times on the Sabbath, so that 
there are nine preaching services. The three pastors 
usually get together on Monday and talk over the 
work, spending part of the day in the most delightful 
fellowship. They make frequent exchanges, taking 
each other's work for a Sunday and thus giving the 
people a change, and themselves some variety of ex- 
perience. In this way they promote acquaintance and 
fellowship throughout the whole parish. This is a 
most profitable combination. The older pastor helps 
the younger men with his wider experience, and the 
boys put new life and fresh spirit into the heart of the 
older man. 

If the amount of money which people are willing 
to give for religious purposes is an index of their 
interest in the Kingdom, one must conclude that there 
has been a very significant revival in that respect 
throughout the Larger Parish. More means for carry- 
ing on the work are now in sight than one would 
have supposed it possible to raise five years ago. 
The total salary of the pastor and his two assistants 
is two and a half times the pastor's salary alone 
before the wider work was undertaken. This, how- 
ever, is made possible only through the help of the 
Home Missionary Society. The contributions to home 



io8 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

and foreign missions have more than doubled in this 
period, and the number of contributors has increased 

twofold. More than twice as much in- nicy is raised 
on the whole field now than was the case before the 
wider work began, and it comes with just as little 
. Nobody now objects to the work on financial 
ground. It has paid Eor itself in every way. 

Two or three times a year all the services in the 
out-stations arc omitted, and all the people are invited 
to come together Eor a Sabbath service on the seminary 
campus at Benzonia. These arc most enjoyable and 
profitable occasions. They assemble under the great 
beech and maple tree-, a sermon is preached by some 
noted minister from abroad, there is a picnic dinner 
with time Eor sociability and fellowship, and then in 
the afternoon another service of a more varied char- 
acter. These general services are well attended, and 
the\- tend to bind the whole parish together with a 
larger sense of community interest. 

Believing that the church should minister to the 
whole man and have something to say and something 
to do with his social as well as his spiritual nature, 
we have paid considerable attention to some things 
that have often been considered as lying outside of the 
sphere of religion. Realizing the tendency of country 
life to isolation and extreme individualism, and the 
danger of its becoming barren and monotonous, we 
have thought it important to provide for social and 
literary functions, and for wholesome recreation and 
healthful pleasures. It has been our effort to make all 
our out-stations social centers, and to encourage fre- 



THE LARGER BEXZOXIA PARISH 109 

quent meetings where the people might mingle in a 
free and friendly manner. They have responded 
heartily to these efforts and have appreciated very 
much the opportunities that have been afforded them 
in this direction. 

Neighborhood clubs have been organized in some of 
the out-stations whose function it is to provide for 
these social necessities. The name " Neighborhood 
Club " quite well defines their object. The work is 
carried on in three departments under the direction 
of three committees: (1) the Social Committee, whose 
business it is to arrange for picnics, parties, excur- 
sions, etc.; (2) the Literary Committee, which pro- 
vides lectures, debates, and the like; and (3) the Team 
Work Committee, which leads out in any movement of 
a public or a charitable nature in which the people 
need to cooperate. The meetings of these clubs are 
w r ell attended and they are a profitable source of im- 
provement and recreation. 

Lecture courses are arranged, usually by home tal- 
ent, and upon subjects of local and practical interest. 
The pastor has done a good deal of work with the 
stereopticon, illustrating the story of a trip to Pales- 
tine and a cruise of the Mediterranean. These clubs 
soon develop talent and resources of various kinds 
which are quite sufficient, and they require but little 
help from the outside. 

Some attention has been paid to athletics. The 
young men have been organized into athletic clubs, and 
they have been headed up in an athletic league. They 
hold occasional field days, with sports and contests for 



no THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

the boys and girls. This we find is very profitable 
when we have seine one who has the training and the 
other qualifications of a suitable director. 

One more way of working has also proved valuable 
and well worth while. Like most small villages, we 
have a weekly newspaper which finds its way into 
ni si of the homes of the parish. The pastor and 
the editor work together in the effort to make it an 
organ of helpful power in the community life. For 
five years I have had a column, usually a column and 
a half, in this paper each week. It is my regular 
Monday forenoon work to write " The Pastor's Col- 
umn." I put into it whatever I think will be useful 
t<> the people, bringing them many a message that 
would hardly come appropriately in the pulpit, and 
reaching in that way many whom I should not often 
come in touch with otherwise. The themes are vari- 
ous, but a few will serve as specimens: " How to 
Keep One's Religion and Make It Pay "; " The Back 
Yard"; "The Test of the Summer Time"; " The 
Man You Happen to Meet "; " Plan Your Work, and 
Work Your Plan," etc. Any local topic of general 
interest is taken up and discussed, and the activities of 
the church and the social and literary doings in the 
various out-stations are kept before the people. I con- 
sider this one of my most valuable ways of working, 
and I find that The Pastor's Column is eagerly looked 
for and widely read. This suggests the question 
whether in the past the pastors of our churches have 
sufficiently appreciated the value of printer's ink as 
an adjunct in carrying on religious and community 



THE LARGER BENZONIA PARISH in 

work. If the pastor can speak through the press as 
well as from the pulpit, he is doubling his influence. 
What do we find to be the result of the five years' 
work of the Larger Parish? They have been the five 
most prosperous years of the church's history of more 
than half a century. Two men have been added to 
the clerical force. The expenses of the church have 
been met, and the bills have been paid when due. The 
contributions for home and foreign missions have 
more than doubled. More members have been received 
than during any other similar period. There has been 
perfect harmony, and the people have been glad and 
happy in their common work. Ten places of worship 
have been established in the country around where 
regular services are held. The people in these neigh- 
borhoods attend their own services, and do not come 
to the central church as many of them formerly did. 
The present arrangement does not tend to build up a 
large central congregation, but has the opposite effect. 
Thirty former central members have become part of a 
newly formed church three miles away. There has 
been no great increase in the population, either of the 
village, or of the country around. But the congrega- 
tion and Sunday-school of the central church were 
never so large as they have been during this period. 
It has been found impossible to accommodate all those 
who wish to worship in the church, or properly to 
care for those attending the Sunday-school. A larger 
building became an actual necessity, and in the summer 
of 19 1 3 an addition was made, increasing the seating 
capacity more than one third and providing a number 



ii2 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

of rooms for Sunday-school and social purposes. The 
building has been painted, reshingled, and thoroughly 
renovated; even thing about is in good shape, and it 
has all been paid for. The congregations fill the 
larger building as well as they did before the addition 
was made. Can we doubt that the blessing of God 
will attend any church that sees the vision, and with 
faith and courage and sacrifice gives itself to the work 
of making it a reality? 

I believe we are beginning to see the dawning of 
a better day for the rural regions; that the fountains 
of physical, moral, and religious strength which have 
seemed to be failing in these latter days are about to 
be " reopened," and that we may soon expect to see 
them Mowing with new force and volume to refresh 
the earth. Perhaps there is no movement just at pres- 
ent that is more vitally related to the progress of the 
kingdom of God in the world. God grant that the 
fair and blessed vision may dawn upon every heart, 
that the village churches may see their opportunity, 
and that the work of rehabilitation may proceed at a 
rapid pace in the years that are just before us ! 



FUNCTION, POLICY, AND PROGRAM 113 

THE FUNCTION, POLICY, AND PROGRAM 
OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

{Report of Committee) 

Kenyon L. Butterfield, Chairman, Jessie Field, 
G. Walter Fiske, Charles O. Gill, Albert E. 
Roberts, Henry Wallace. 

Your Committee began its study on the assumption 
that there were three aspects of the work of the coun- 
try church that needed stating: 

1. A definition of the function of the country 
church, in order to gain if possible a clear notion of 
what the fundamental work of the church is, particu- 
larly in relation to the work of other social institutions. 

2. An outline of a general policy for the country 
church as a whole, in trying to carry out its function. 

3. A suggestive program, embodying many con- 
crete plans and suggestions for the work of the local 
church, appropriate to the carrying out of the general 
policy. 

A preliminary statement was prepared by the com- 
mittee, giving a definition of function, an outline of a 
country church policy, and a program of detailed work 
for the local church. This statement was sent to about 
one hundred and fifty leading men in country life work, 
including pastors, country church organization officials, 
and professors in colleges and theological seminaries. 
Nearly a hundred replies were received. A few pre- 
sented excuses for failure to answer; others expressed 
approval without criticism or suggestion. The com- 



ii 4 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

munications more or less extended that were critical 
or suggestive numbered nearly seventy. Some of these 
were very full, and indeed so suggestive and important 
are they that your committee is fully warranted in 
saying that it is doubtful if there is any other collection 
of opinions about the country church so valuable as 
those contained in these seventy replies. The general 
attitude in these replies is most appreciative of the 
purpose sought, while it is critical only of forms of 
statement. 

The committee secured the invaluable service of Dr. 
Wilbert L. Anderson, author of The Country Town, 
to edit this important material. Dr. Anderson's 
sudden death last spring deprived us of his final edit- 
ing, but fortunately, a few days before his death he 
had completed the first draft of his study of these 
replies, and had formulated new statements in the 
light of his study. Your committee has considered 
this material carefully, and while rearranging Dr. An- 
derson's edition of the statement, has made little 
change in the substance. 

It is agreed by your committee that some such state- 
ment as this should be made after thorough study by 
the Commission on Church and Country Life of the 
Federal Council, and promulgated with their approval, 
together with a plan for revivifying the American 
country church and of assisting to organize its work 
on broad but vital lines. 

It is recommended by your committee that this state- 
ment be carefully studied by the whole Commission, 
and that it be not published until it has the practically 



FUNCTION, POLICY, AND PROGRAM 115 

unanimous approval of the Commission, but that, when 
published, it be sent if possible to every country church 
in America, accompanied not only by a letter from this 
Commission expressing the hope that it may be used 
as a basis for discussion of plans for a forward move- 
ment, but that it may also be accompanied by official 
communications from authoritative church bodies, 
urging action and outlining plans for carrying out a 
definite country church campaign. 

The Function of the Country Church 

God's great purpose for men is the highest possible 
development of each personality and of the human 
race as a whole. It is essential to this growth that 
men shall hold adequate ideals of character and life. 
The Christian believes that these ideals must spring 
from a clear appreciation of God's purpose, and from 
a consuming desire to reproduce the spirit and life of 
Jesus. 

Therefore, the function of the country church is to 
create, to maintain, and to enlarge both individual 
and community ideals, under the inspiration and guid- 
ance of the Christian motive and teaching, and to help 
rural people to incarnate these ideals in personal and 
family life, in industrial effort, in political develop- 
ment, and in all social relationships. 

The church must bring men to God, and at the 
same time must lead in the task of building God's 
kingdom on earth. 

The mission of the Christian church is that of its 
Founder: To teach the fatherhood of God and the 



n6 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

brotherhood of man as the ideal of life for the indi- 
vidual, the family, the community, and the nation, and 
to point out the best way to make the ideal the actual. 

The Work of the Country Church 

The Committee has divided the work of the country 
church into the following heads : 
i. Knowledge. 

2. Preaching and worship. 

3. Religious educate >n. 

4. The church ministering to all the people. 

5. The church, the servant of the community. 

6. Cooperation among the churches. 

7. Division of labor. 

8. Administration and finance. 

9. The preacher and his helpers. 

10. The preacher, a community builder. 

11. The country church circuit. 
Under each one of these heads there is : 

1. A statement of general policy : 

Intended to apply to the church as a whole, or to 
any church. This policy is expected to be broad 
enough on the one hand to make the church " func- 
tion," and on the other hand practical enough to serve 
as a guide for local church work. 

2. A program for the local church: 

This is by no means complete, but is a list of specific 
things that might be done by the local church. Prob- 
ably no one church will do all of them, but every 
church can do some of them. Each church should 
adapt its program to its own needs and conditions, 



FUNCTION, POLICY, AND PROGRAM 117 

but should always test the program in the light of 
a broad policy. 

3. Suggestions and examples: 

Under this head there is given a list of practical 
helps, either indicating literature or mentioning actual 
instances that show the practicability of many of the 
items in the suggested program. 

I. Knowledge 
policy 

( 1 ) Country church leaders, both preachers and lay- 
men, should have a clear view of the fundamental as- 
pects of the rural problem, and should broadly define 
the relationship of the church to that problem. 

(2) The country church should make a survey of its 
field, to discover neglected individuals and families, to 
ascertain the conditions which determine its work, and 
to learn what movements are entitled to its guidance, 
interest, and support. Two or more churches serving 
the same community should cooperate in such a survey. 
The main results should be made public, but the rights 
of privacy should be duly guarded. 

PROGRAM FOR THE LOCAL CHURCH 

(1) a. Put books, bulletins, and magazines on 
country life into public libraries and church libraries. 

(See lists furnished by Rural Department of Y. M. 
C. A.) 

b. Import lecturers on country life from the agri- 
cultural colleges, church societies, Y. M. C. A., etc. 

c. Have speakers on the subject of the rural prob- 



n8 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LiFE 

lem, at church conventions, conventions of young 
people's societies, etc. 

d. Hold county or district conferences of rural 
preachers to study the rural problem. 

(2) a. Promote the community survey. Use some 
good standard survey such as that furnished by the 
Federal Council, by the Presbyterian board (Dr. Wil- 
son), by agricultural colleges. 

b. Encourage self -study by the community. 

c. Chart results in graphic form so that material 
can be preserved and also made available for actual 
use. 

II. Preaching and Worship 



The country church should foster private and public 
worship of God. Through its preaching it should 
bring a ringing spiritual message to the community, 
and interpret the gospel for the uplift of motive and 
the trans formation and development of character. 

PROGRAM 

1. Preaching every- Sunday in every field. 

2. Emphasis on congregational singing. 

3. Topics and texts with rural setting. 

4. Religious use of special days, like Harvest Home, 
Rural Life Sundays, Thanksgiving, Farm Mother's 
Day, Easter, — with reference to rural environment. 



FUNCTION, POLICY, AND PROGRAM 119 

III. Religious Education 

policy 

The country church should develop definite means 
of religious education, both of adults and of children, 
interpreting personal and social duty in terms of rural 
life, and applying what is learned in actual social 
service. To this end, the pulpit, the home, and the 
Sunday-school should definitely cooperate. 

PROGRAM 

1. Graded Bible instruction for children; adapted 
to the average country Sunday-school. 

2. Instruction of adults through consecutive studies 
in sermonic material. 

3. Mid-week and monthly conferences. 

4. Rural Bible study. 

IV. The Church Ministering to All the 
People 

policy 

While the country church should minister to the ef- 
ficient and successful, to the end that it may hold the 
community through competent leadership, it should 
minister with special zeal to the ineffective, the poor, 
and the degenerate, since they also belong to Christ. 
The rapidly increasing instability of the rural popula- 
tion lays upon the church the special duty of religious 
and social helpfulness to the tenant farmer and the 
hired man. 



120 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

PROGRAM 

1. Organize clubs within the church for community 
service projects; bring in outside speakers at club din- 
ners, etc., to discuss community work. 

2. Utilize existing women's organizations for 
larger and more effective service. 

3. Encourage use of the church building by organ- 
izations and societies. 

4. Give public advocacy to various forms of social 
service, such as clean-up days, community picnics, play 
festivals, town improvement, Arbor day, beautifying 
cemetery or common, etc. 

5. Preach contentment with rural life and ade- 
quacy of country as a life investment. 

6. Make church sociables community affairs, if pos- 
sible, with all welcome. 

V. The Church the Servant of the 
Community 

policy 

The country church should regard itself as the 
servant of the entire community, and should be deeply 
concerned with all legitimate agencies in the com- 
munity; it should give them support and promotion as 
there may be opportunity or need. It should suggest 
and inspire rather than instigate and supervise, but it 
may undertake any new service for which there is not 
other provision. 

Cooperation with Other 'Agencies. — The church 
should recognize a division of functions in the com- 



FUNCTION, POLICY, AND PROGRAM 121 

munity, and should cooperate with other institutions 
and organizations. Such adjustments are made indi- 
vidually for the most part, but by public advocacy and 
by its educational methods the church may exert its 
collective influence for all ends that may help to up- 
build the community. 

PROGRAM 

Community movements should be instigated or aided 
by active cooperation, as the need may be, for such 
ends as the following: 

1. Temperance, wherever the community is suffer- 
ing from intemperance or lawlessness ; a campaign for 
no-license or prohibition; law enforcement; Sabbath 
observance. 

2. Public health and sanitation. 

3. Good roads. 

4. School education for rural life, and ordinarily 
consolidated schools. 

5. Intellectual development by means of libraries, 
lectures, reading circles, clubs, and similar agencies. 

6. Provisions for public recreation, and a Saturday 
half -holiday for agricultural laborers. 

7. Promotion of demonstrations of recreation on 
church grounds if no better place can be had. 

8. Better farming and better farm homes, with 
special stress upon extension work of agricultural 
colleges. 

9. Beauty of village, roadsides, and private 
grounds. 

10. Celebration of religious and patriotic holidays, 



122 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

observance of old home week, and production of his- 
torical pageants. 

11. Education of the people by preaching on com- 
munity planning. 

12. Establishment of a supervised social center or 
community house. 

13. Local federation for rural progress and other 
community programs. 

14. In general, promotion of cooperation among 
farmers in their production, buying, and selling. 

VI. Cooperation among the Churches 

POLICY 

( rroups of country churches, with natural and social 
affiliations, should unite for the study of their special 
field and for the more effective use of their resources 
in meeting its needs, thus forming a church federa- 
tion. Churches may consolidate where only one 
church is needed in a community. In some communi- 
ties a federated church may be practicable, an arrange- 
ment by which all churches in a community unite for 
worship and work, but each church society preserves 
its corporate identity. 

PROGRAM 

i. Union meetings for religious and patriotic pur- 
poses, song service, etc. 

2. Community projects for various forms of com- 
munity welfare, Christmas tree, etc. 

3. Evangelistic campaign on the cooperative basis, 



FUNCTION, POLICY, AND PROGRAM 123 

preceded by survey and followed by effective organized 
work. 

4. Union campaigns on moral issues like temper- 
ance. 

5. Cooperative surveys. 

6. Cooperative boys' and girls' clubs. 

7. Cooperative play festivals. 

8. Cooperative community pageants. 

9. Cooperation in athletic contests. 

VII. Division of Labor 
policy 
Oftentimes the greatest efficiency of the church re- 
quires specialized agencies for special tasks. The rural 
Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A., the young people's so- 
cieties, and other similar organized allies of the coun- 
try church should therefore be utilized and encouraged 
where needed, and supported in their work. 

PROGRAM 

1. Furnishing leaders for special community tasks. 
Encouraging financial support. 
Special work with boys and girls. 
Special work with young people. 
Athletic league and recreation features. 
Use of church buildings for these " allies of the 



country church." 

VIII. Administration and Finance 
policy 
A sound business organization and an adequate 
financial policy are essential to the conduct of the 



i2 4 THE CHURCH AXD COUNTRY LIFE 

country church. This involves utilizing the available 
resources of a community, the relation of the local 
church to the Home Missionary Aid, the matter of 
minimum salaries for the resident ministers, and 
proper methods of financial accounting. 

PROGRAM 

i. Official boards and organizations regularly and 
completely organized with proper program of work. 

2. Carefully kept records and regular reports of 
work in finances. 

3. Systematic, community-wide, and adequate 
financial plan for local church support and benevo- 
lences. 

IX. The Preacher and His Helpers 



A resident ministry is essential to the highest ef- 
ficiency of the country church. He should be ade- 
quately trained to meet rural needs. Permanency of 
tenure should be sought by every possible means, 
including the payment of salaries commensurate with 
present economic needs and proportionate to ability 
and service. One of the greatest tasks of the pastor 
is to inspire, enlist, and train all available leadership 
on behalf of the full measure of the service of the 
church to its members and to the community. 

PROGRAM 
THE TRAINING OF CHURCH WORKERS 

i. Every effort should be made to train leadership 
in the local church, such as Sunday-school teachers, 



FUNCTION, POLICY, AND PROGRAM 125 

lay readers, elders, deacons, leaders of young people's 
societies, officers of the various organizations for old 
and young within the church. 

2. Training in young people's meetings. 

3. Training in Bible school. 

4. Normal class leader and lectures. 

5. Conferences and institutes. 

6. Reading and correspondence courses. 

7. Personal interviews. 

8. Practice work for novices, including apprentice- 
ship system. 

9. Interchurch visitation. 

X. The Preacher a Community Builder 

policy 

The immediate work of the pastor is with the local 
church to which he is responsible, but his efforts 
should by no means be confined to the church. The 
church should, as it were, lend its pastor to the com- 
munity for such helpfulness to individuals, agencies, 
and causes as will definitely contribute to the building 
up of the community as a whole. 

PROGRAM 

The pastor may help in many or all of the tasks of 
rural community building that have been suggested 
heretofore in this outline on behalf of " better farm- 
ing, better business, and better living." 



126 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

THE COUNTRY CHURCH 
S. L. Morris 

Changed conditions, economic, social, educational, 
moral, and religious, are tremendously affecting 
modern life from every angle. A new era, dominated 
by new thought, new problems, new environs, and 
new ideals, lias created a new world of thought and 
life. It is as if the old dispensation had passed away 
and a new dispensation had been ushered in. 

Whether for better or for worse, leadership has 
passed from the country. Once it contained the mass 
of the people. Now the city is attracting not simply 
the floating population but the mechanical genius, the 
business skill, and the intellectual talent of the country. 
Once the country church, pastored by the highest type 
of intellectual and spiritual ministry, influenced the 
national life, setting the standard of morals and lead- 
ing great revivals, resulting in religious upheavals, 
reaching to the remotest nooks and corners of the 
country. Now the scepter of leadership, moral, intel- 
lectual, and spiritual, is passing to the city. Is it the 
survival of the fittest? 

The influence of the country on life and character 
can be only partially apprehended, even after an array 
of facts and figures as familiar as twice-told tales. 
Rural scenery and honest toil are calculated to make 
strong men physically, gigantic men intellectually, and 
clean men morally and spiritually. It is the psycho- 
logical explanation of the recognized fact that the 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH 127 

country church was formerly the mother of teachers, 
statesmen, and theologians. 

City churches are being recruited from the country 
not only in numbers but in moral fiber. " What are 
you doing, away out in the backwoods ? " asked a city 
pastor of a country minister. " I am engaged, " re- 
plied he, " in the work of helping you to save your 
city." If the church but appreciated the significance of 
this statement, it would recognize that the gifts of the 
rich city church to evangelize the country are in reality 
an indirect investment for its own salvation. If coun- 
try life degenerates and the rural church disinte- 
grates, where will come the moral force to counteract 
the degenerating influence of our increasingly corrupt 
cities ? 

Roosevelt's Country Life Commission sounded the 
keynote of the first great reform needed : " Any con- 
sideration of the problem of rural life that leaves out 
of account the function and possibilities of the church 
and of related institutions would be grossly inade- 
quate, . . . because, from the purely sociological 
point of view, the church is fundamentally a necessary 
institution in country life." 

One need not travel far afield to discover the causes 
resulting in the disintegration of the country church. 
Shifting populations are perhaps the most potent 
factor. Cities do not grow phenominally by means of 
their own natural increase. At the beginning of the 
nineteenth century less than four per cent, of the pop- 
ulation was urban; but at present over forty-six 
per cent, live in the city. 



128 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

The growth of the city is at the expense of the 
country, which is drained of its best blood and 
talent; and the social, educational, and commercial 
advantages of the city lure to these more attractive 
fields. 

The tenant system of farming is paralyzing the 
energies of the religious forces. Men who do not 
own homes and who in all probability will change their 
dwelling-place by another year have no great incentive 
either to build or to maintain neighborhood churches. 
Xo wonder then that it has been said that greater 
than war, pestilence, and famine is the curse of land- 
lordism. 

The spiritual interests of the rural districts are sub- 
jected to absent treatment. The absentee pastor af- 
flicts the church with his presence on Saturday even- 
ing, for once a month preaching, and he takes his 
flight by the earliest train on Monday. Only in the 
remotest degree does he touch the social or spiritual 
life of the community. The tenant system of farming 
is no greater curse to the country than the tenant min- 
istry is to the country church. 

This criticism of the tenant system of the ministry 
has no reference whatever to the noble army of itin- 
erant preachers who have served as pioneers in desti- 
tute regions, nor to the self-denying pastors of groups 
which could not in any other way secure the services 
of the sanctuary. Such men are making the supreme 
sacrifice of life and are making the care of souls their 
chief concern. 

The facts are easily ascertained and the reasons for 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH 129 

the disintegration of the country church will scarcely 
provoke debate. The chief consideration is the 
remedy. The effective remedy is the evangelistic 
pastor, whose earnest messages are inspired by genuine 
love of souls, inducing a revival all the year round, 
and who in every house ceases not " to teach and to 
preach Jesus as the Christ." 

Definite sacrifices must be made. " The preacher 
and his family must make their sacrifices as definitely 
as if they went to China or to Africa to preach the 
gospel." It is easier to die a martyr's death than to 
endure the lifelong martyrdom of a sacrificial life in 
an obscure pastorate. Let the church challenge her 
most promising men and see how many will respond. 
If the church can secure volunteers of this character 
it will be comparatively easy to save the country 
church; and it would carry conviction to the world if 
the greatest of all Christ's works were reproduced, — 
the preaching of the gospel to the poor. 

The key to the situation is the country pastor. Il- 
lustrations are on record of marvelous results accom- 
plished by such men as Matthew B. McNutt, C. O. 
Gill, Harlow S. Mills, and others. The same men 
with the same equipment and the same methods would 
succeed in almost any community or denomination. 
If we could secure a sufficient number of such men 
so as to constitute a chain, linking neighborhood to 
neighborhood, we can well imagine resuscitated com- 
munities and revived churches, till the country church 
becomes once more a great moral standard and a 
spiritual force throughout the bounds of the nation, 



130 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

while the thrill of its revived life and expanding 
activities would reach " unto the uttermost part of the 
earth." 



ORGANIZATION OF THE COMMISSION ON 

THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

Warren II. Wilson 

In proposing the form of organization of this Com- 
mission one must first consider what is the function 
of the Federal Council itself. It is one of several 
federations, each of which has a place as a service 
organization in united Protestantism. These organ- 
izations do not rule or govern one another, and they 
avoid competition with one another. This results in 
a division of function. The Federal Council is, there- 
fore, one of the agencies in the list in which belong 
the Young Men's Christian Association, the Mission- 
ary Education Movement, the Laymen's Missionary 
Movement, and recently the Men and Religion Move- 
ment. These are financed separately, possess the al- 
legiance of the churches, and serve, each of them, a 
definite purpose. 

This is very characteristic of rural organization 
throughout the world. In the best organized country 
life we know the multi-cellular type prevails. Co- 
operative creameries have attached to them egg- 
gathering associations. Rural credit societies are as- 



ORGANIZATION OF THE COMMISSION 131 

sociated with cooperative stores. But these various 
organizations are independent of one another. They 
do not govern one another, and they avoid com- 
petition. 

What, therefore, is the function of the Federal 
Council among the great service organizations of 
American Protestantism ? 

I. It gets isolated workers together. It warms the 
heart of the aggressive Christian leader with a larger 
fellowship. It gives him a sense of wholeness where- 
with to heal the individualism of denominational 
action. Our independence has forfeited for us our 
right to experience Christianity as one. We do not 
regret the price we pay for 'our religious liberty, but 
we value as a precious thing the meetings afforded us 
by the Federal Council. 

II. The Federal Council in its various gatherings 
publishes the testimony of the churches to the unity of 
Christendom. It exalts the oneness of all these 
churches in the interests committed to various Com- 
missions of the Council. 

III. The Federal Council publishes a literature on 
unity. 

IV. It investigates and publishes the conditions 
which affect all the churches alike. 

V. The Federal Council sends deputations to cer- 
tain civic and economic powers. It is a body big 
enough to command the attention of the President of 
the United States and its dignity is sufficient to enable 
it to represent the churches in the American Federa- 
tion of Labor. 



132 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

VI. The Federal Council regulates and guides the 
forces which work toward federation. I do not 
think the Federal Council has, or any of these federa- 
tions and quasi- federation " in the churches has, the 
power to initiate federation, but we have in the Coun- 
cil an agency capable of guiding the forces in the 
churches whenever federation is needed. This great 
body purges proposals of their false and unsound fea- 
tures. Jt furnishes typical forms, provides informa- 
tion as to experience, and is itself a great clearing- 
house whereby the forces working for federation may 
avoid competition with one another. 

VII. The Federal Council does not at any time 
impair the influence of the church, but strengthens it. 
It works for the churches and confers upon them a 
great benefit in giving to each communion the weight 
and the support, the sanction and the fellowship, of 
every other communion. 

Furthermore, let us ask what this Commission has 
done as a preliminary to suggesting what form of 
organization it most needs to-day. 

First, this Commission has inherited the Gill and 
Pinchot Survey of Windsor County, Vermont, and 
Tompkins County, New York, which was published by 
the Macmillan Co. under the title, The Country 
Church. This Commission has collated, in the second 
place, and has at this meeting presented, reports, some 
of them careful and thorough, upon certain static as- 
pects of the country church. This investigation has 
looked upon the church as an existing thing rather 
than as a progressive institution. They present a 



ORGANIZATION OF THE COMMISSION > 133 

static, not a dynamic view of the church. Third, 
through Mr. Gill's office in Columbus this Commission 
has investigated rural conditions in Ohio, with a view 
to county and state federations. And, fourth, it has 
assembled this Conference. 

In view of this definition of the place of the Federal 
Council, and in view of the needs of the time, it 
seems to me that this Commission should organize 
along the following lines for the coming two years : 

1. Avoiding duplication with the Missionary Edu- 
cation Movement, the Laymen's Missionary Move- 
ment, the Young Men's Christian Association, and 
other bodies of similar type, and utilizing their service 
as if we were an organic part of their work, the Com- 
mission should continue for the future to investigate 
rural conditions within definite limits. The brilliant 
record made by Mr. Gill as an investigator justifies 
a continuance of this function. There will for years 
to come be need of thorough and convincing work in 
the investigation of rural conditions. It is to be said 
here, however, that there is no longer need of investi- 
gation for propaganda purposes alone. The attention 
of the public has been commanded. We can now get 
a hearing when we ask it. We do not need to investi- 
gate every general appeal to the public as once we did. 
The time has come now when investigation should be 
harnessed to particular tasks. I believe, therefore, that 
the Commission should decide to limit the work of 
investigation to the function of preparing for definite 
action proposed. In Ohio we propose a definite action, 
namely: to organize the state and to organize the 



134 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

counties of the state in the interest of the country 
church. In this state, therefore, investigation directed 
toward that end is being made. I believe that the 
Commission should direct its energies to the investiga- 
tion of those fields in which federations may be pro- 
posed, and in which the service of this Commission is 
sought with that end in view. 

2. The G mmission should continue to publish in 
books and pamphlets and in newspaper articles the re- 
sult of these investigations, and the reports otherwise 
made to it. There is a continuing need of printed 
matter on the country church, and a constant propa- 
ganda should be carried on in the interest of the 
country church. 

3. The Commission should hold conferences for 
getting together the people who are interested in the 
country church. The annual conference held by the 
Young Men's Christian Association until last year 
rendered a great service, and, if the way is open, such 
a conference ought to be held by the Federal Council 
in a way to avoid interference with the Young Men's 
Christian Association. The Federal Council represents 
the churches organically, and, in spite of the fact that 
conferences do not legislate for the churches, their 
value is very great in bringing together those who 
have been working in lonely places without the privi- 
lege of intercourse and interchange of experience. 

4. We believe that the Commission should cham- 
pion the country church in legislative proposals now 
being considered. For instance, the discussion of rural 
credit is of great concern to the churches. No indi- 



ORGANIZATION OF THE COMMISSION 135 

vidual church has the right — which the Federal Coun- 
cil has — to approach government officials, from the 
President of the United States to the humblest assem- 
blyman. Such a Federal Council as we are should 
arrange for the advocacy of those legislative pro- 
posals which will assist the country church and for 
opposing those whose vicious character would injure 
the country church and community. 

In the same connection, the Commission should de- 
fine its position on the country school and should take 
active measures wherever opportunity offers, espe- 
cially at Washington and at state capitals, to promote 
such reorganization of the country school as shall 
strengthen the country church of all denominations. 
With all frankness we should face the fact that we are 
working for those churches which are not in the Coun- 
cil as actively as for those churches which are within 
the Federal Council. 

The Federal Council should also promote church 
activity, or, more precisely perhaps we should say, 
guide church activity along three lines, 

1. It should further the organization of depart- 
ments in the leading religious communions which shall 
advance the interests of the country church and con- 
serve the rural congregations. 

2. The Commission ought to prepare for the so- 
cieties that are in the churches such literature and 
lesson studies, and ought to push the use of such meth- 
ods as shall make the Sunday-school, the Endeavor 
Society, and kindred organizations directly useful to 
the country church. 



136 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

3. The Commission ought to assist in the formation 
of state and county federations, where the churches 
are inclined to form these bodies. I do not think that 
the Federal Council can undertake, as a rule, to fed- 
crate the churches. These local federations will arise 
of themselves. Furthermore, the Federal Council has 
a Commission to which is assigned the work of " fed- 
erated movements." It will be the business of this 
Commission to promote federations, county and state 
in character. It should be our business to cooperate 
with these bodies and to direct along rural lines the 
work that they shall do. 

To this end the Commission on the Church and 
Country Life ought to have, it seems to me, the fol- 
lowing committees, and these committees should be 
intrusted with the right to pass upon all actions of the 
Commission or of its secretary within the lines of 
work assigned to these various committees re- 
spectively : 

1. A Committee on Survey. 

2. A Committee on Denominational Organizations 
and Societies. 

3. A Committee on Legislation and Education. 

4. A Committee on State and County Federations. 

5. A Committee on Literature. 

These five committees will do unpaid labor and, as 
far as we can see, for the future the most of the work 
of this Commission must be unpaid labor. Resources 
do not now appear for extending the work of the 
Commission through paid employees. The important 
thing is, therefore, to extend the Commission's work 



ORGANIZATION OF THE COMMISSION 137 

by the hands of volunteers, and this will be secured 
when these volunteer, committees are trusted, and 
when the Commission and its Secretary and its Presi- 
dent take action only as approved by these various 
committees. 

The financial problem of the Commission is an im- 
portant one, but it does not seem wise that the Com- 
mission's work should be limited by the ability or 
inability of this Commission to raise a separate fund. 
Let us face the future with reliance upon the volunteer 
work of men who> value this Commission so much that 
they are willing to spend some of their own money on 
car-fare, and some of their own time in service to the 
general cause. 

It then remains that the Commission must find the 
means for certain definite work, as follows, that will 
require to be paid for: 

1. Surveys. 

2. Holding of conferences. 

3. The publishing of the results of investigation. 

4. Organization of federations. 

5. The exerting of influence upon legislation. 

All these cost money. We gratefully recognize the 
generous support which the Commission has had in 
the past from the large-hearted man whose foresight 
has created this work and called us together. In volun- 
teering our services we recognize that the greater the 
body of volunteer work, the greater must be the ex- 
pense of the central office. We believe this expense 
should be reduced to a minimum. There are too many 
causes now asking for money, and the Commission has 



138 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

not found itself skilful in raising money. We recom- 
mend, however, that a Committee on Finance be ap- 
pointed, to consist of live members, including the 
chairman, secretary, and three other members of the 
Commission appointed by the chairman. 

In short, the scope oi the Commission on the Church 
and Country Life should be national, representing all 
the churches, which shall cooperate with religious de- 
nominations in the nation. It shall investigate coun- 
try conditions with a view to action exclusively. It 
shall publish the results of investigation and other ma- 
terial of interest to the churches of all denominations. 
It shall hold conferences for getting men together, at 
least one country church conference of national char- 
acter . mce a year. It shall champion the country 
church in legislation for rural credit, for suitable edu- 
cational reform, and it shall push the organization 
throughout the various churches of departments of 
church and country life, aiming to secure such a depart- 
ment in every one of the leading denominations. It 
shall advocate also suitable organization and litera- 
ture, such as country churches need in Sunday-schools 
and young people's societies, and it shall also promote 
the interest of state and county federations. These 
interests will sufficiently occupy the Commission dur- 
ing the next two years and will lay a foundation for 
the future work of this body. 



TRAINING OF THE RURAL MINISTRY 139 

THE TRAINING OF THE RURAL MINISTRY 
{Report of Committee) 
George B. Stewart, Chairman, Kenyon L. But- 

TERFIELD, EDWIN L. EARP, G. WALTER FlSKE, 

Arthur S. Hoyt, Frank A. Starratt, Warren H. 
Wilson. 

Your Committee on the Training of the Rural Min- 
istry would respectfully report as follows : 

It has not been possible for the Committee to hold 
a meeting, but it has carried forward its work by cor- 
respondence. The conclusions of this report, while 
not the unqualified expression of the opinion of the 
members of the Committee, may be said fairly to sum- 
marize the several opinions held by them. 

We take pleasure in presenting in its entirety for 
the careful consideration of those concerned with the 
solution of the important problems covered by this sub- 
ject, " A Tentative Program for the Better Training 
of Rural Ministers," prepared by a committee of the 
Massachusetts Federation of Churches. This com- 
mittee is a pioneer in this field of education and has 
given much attention to its task. This tentative pro- 
gram has much to commend it to favorable considera- 
tion and has already received approval in its main 
items of the seminaries of Greater Boston. 

" A Tentative Program for the Better Training 
of Rural Ministers, Massachusetts Federation of 
Churches : 



i 4 o THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

I. For Theological Students 

" A. Principles of Preparation. 

" Students who look forward to the rural ministry 
should have : 

" i. A thorough knowledge of the English Bible, as 
fundamental to their interpretation of the Christian 
religion. This would include the history of the life 
and thought of the Hebrew people, both in Old and 
New Testament times, an intimate acquaintance with 
the life and teachings of Jesus and the Apostles, and 
correct methods of interpretation. 

" 2. A resonably good command of the philosophy 
of religion, and the doctrines of Christianity as they 
have developed in the church, and of the influence of 
Christianity upon society at large. 

" 3. An understanding of religious psychology and 
rural sociology, that they may enter intelligently and 
sympathetically into individual, family, and community 
life, and be of spiritual and social service to each. 

" 4. Training in methods of approach to the people 
as preachers, pastors, and religious educators, and in- 
struction in the best methods of effective organization 
of the forces of the church and the community. 

" 5. Instruction in making rural surveys and experi- 
ence with pastorates in the country, in order to acquire 
adequate material for community leadership. 

" 6. A conviction of the importance of the rural 
ministry as a life-work, and willingness to give at 
least five years to the building up of a single com- 
munity in the true missionary spirit. 



TRAINING OF THE RURAL MINISTRY 141 

" B. Course of Study. 

" 1. Their curriculum in the seminary should in- 
clude biblical literature, history, and interpretation; 
the history of Christianity, especially in its modern 
period in America; with research work and reports on 
rural movements and biography; theology — biblical, 
historical, and systematic; homiletics and pastoral 
methods; general sociology and the specific problems 
of the rural church; and psychology and pedagogy, 
with special study of the rural Sunday-school. 

"2. Elsewhere than in the seminary, they should 
make a study of agriculture, including farm practice 
and management and the application of science to farm 
problems; agricultural economics, including coopera- 
tion and market distribution; farm business methods; 
and advanced rural sociology, including rural educa- 
tion, art, and literature, recreation, sanitation, and 
social organization. These may be pursued by means 
of summer schools, correspondence courses, or one or 
two years in an agricultural college. 

II. For Settled Ministers 

" Men already in the ministry should have an oppor- 
tunity to supplement their previous training and to re- 
ceive occasional stimulus. 

" 1. Through Summer Schools, in sessions of two 
weeks or more, consisting of forenoon lectures, one 
of which shall deal with a phase of the rural church 
problem; afternoon conferences and excursions, and 
evening addresses of an inspirational nature. 

" 2. Through Addresses and Conferences at church 



142 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

associations and conventions, wherever representatives 
of rural church interests come together. 

" 3. Through Rural Institutes, where speakers from 
seminaries, the Young Men's Christian Association, 
the agricultural college, and other rural agencies may 
discuss their common interests and lay plans for co- 
operation. 

"4. Through Correspondence Courses, maintained 
by seminary and agricultural college, through which 
the student may keep in touch with the most recent 
investigations and conclusions. 

"5. Through such local groups as reading clubs, 
improvement societies, and other agencies of local bet- 
terment, which shall unite all the progressive forces of 
the community." 

Tt will appear from what follows that your com- 
mittee is in substantial agreement with this Committee 
of the Massachusetts Federation of Churches. It 
would seem that this report assumes an antecedent cul- 
tural course and general theological training. Other- 
wise, it would be open to serious criticism, as lacking 
in necessary foundation preparation for the special 
training admirably outlined in it. 

Your committee finds that the task set for it falls 
naturally into four divisions. 

I. The Training of the Theological Student 

1. The country minister must be as strong a man 
and as thoroughly equipped as any other minister. 
In the treatment of the country church and the coun- 



TRAINING OF THE RURAL MINISTRY 143 

try minister this vital fact is too frequently over- 
looked. It is an initial blunder that is responsible in 
a large degree for the pitiable plight of many rural 
parishes. Those charged with the preparation of 
young men for ministry in the country must recognize 
that it is a waste of effort to train men who have not 
initiative, capacity for leadership, intellectual endow- 
ment. It goes without saying that the young man 
must be good, for spiritual qualities are indispensable. 
But he must also be good for something, if he is to 
be a country pastor. 

This conviction that the rural minister must be a 
man whose endowment is of a very high order is 
fundamental to the satisfactory solution of the coun- 
try church problem. The men who in the past have 
adequately served the country church, the men who 
are doing it to-day qualify in this respect. It must be 
understood that no other grade need apply. 

2. The curriculum should provide for the thorough 
training of the country minister in things fundamental. 
It is difficult to think that he can have a too complete 
scholarly equipment for his task. Above all things his 
training should be of that quality which would culti- 
vate his powers of observation, reflection, concentra- 
tion, and persistent intellectual toil. If he is to func- 
tion properly in his sphere he must have his intellectual 
powers well in hand and at his command. He cannot 
be too well informed. He cannot be too accurate a 
thinker. He cannot be too intellectually forceful. It 
would, therefore, be the poorest sort of pedagogy that 
would sacrifice his general culture for specialized prac- 



144 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

tical training. Therefore, all those biblical and other 
studies which are regarded by any seminary as funda- 
mental to the Christian ministry should be regarded 
as fundamental for him. 

In no case should he be thought to be inferior in 
social attainments or intellectual gifts and still be 
thought to be suited to a country parish because of 
this inferiority. Our country ministers and our coun- 
try churches must be made to feel a self-respect that 
is not possible so long as they are regarded as not 
quite the equals of their city contemporaries. 

3. In specializing f< >r this work the seminary might, 
with great profit, add to its general courses, elective 
courses in " the country church as a community cen- 
ter," "rural sociology," "rural social organization," 
" rural social engineering," with a view to informing 
the student in the social problems he will face in the 
parish and the position he must fill as the leader. He 
must be trained for leadership. 

This should not require him to be trained in agricul- 
ture. It is unreasonable to ask the seminary to add 
this large department of culture to its already over- 
crowded curriculum, and it is equally unreasonable to 
exact of the minister, of whom already so much is 
required, that he should be informed in the farmer's 
job. All that is required of him is that he should be 
sympathetically and intelligently interested in the work 
of the farm. The farmer, no more than the city pew- 
holder, expects or desires his minister to be an expert 
in any other than his own job. If he is this he will 
meet all the demands of his country parish. And he 



TRAINING OF THE RURAL MINISTRY 145 

should be an expert in his own sphere. He must know 
his own job down to the smallest detail. Time taken 
from perfecting himself in this, even if it is spent in 
learning the job of the farmer, is misspent. 

4. The student for the ministry must have a vision 
of the new country church. The day is past, if it 
ever really existed, when the country minister can 
meet the demands of his parish solely in the conven- 
tional pastoral way. The country church must adjust 
itself to the community as its servant, and its pastor 
must be the leader of this social group and the director 
of it as a community force. To give him this vision 
and to prepare him for this leadership is essential in 
the preparation of the theological student. 

5. The student for the ministry must be alive to the 
religious character of his mission. He and his church 
are to utilize the religious forces, present the religious 
ideals, promote the religious interests, and develop the 
religious life of the community. They are the repre- 
sentatives of religion, and it is for them to make re- 
ligion effective. This is the point at which the church 
and the minister are to function. The community de- 
pends upon them to furnish . the religious ideals, 
religious motive, religious inspiration, religious power. 
If they fail to do this, the community is deprived of 
the most potent forces for its uplift, for the furnishing 
of which they are constituted. 



146 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

II. The Training of Young Men who Omit 

the Seminary 

It is said that there is a large body of men who go 
direct from college, or from high schools, to the coun- 
try parishes without any theological training. The 
number is reckoned by some of our committee as high 
as eight\ -five per cent, of those entering the ministry. 
This body of country ministers creates a field for the 
scminar\ which must not be overlooked or neglected. 

Your committee is of the opinion that it is more a 
denominational than a seminary matter, as there is 
wide divergence among the denominations in their 
practice at this p< >int. The theory and policy regarding 
the training of ministers is widely divergent, and it 
would seem that it is incumbent upon those denomina- 
tions that encourage this practice to provide the train- 
ing that these members of their clerical body need for 
the discharge of their professional duties. Your com- 
mittee does not feel itself sufficiently advised as to the 
various elements in the problem thus presented to be 
qualified to make suggestions that would have more 
than general value. Some of the suggestions made in 
other parts of this report may be of service to the class 
of men referred to in this section. 

III. The Training of Country Pastors for 

Larger Efficiency 

Your committee offers the following suggestions to 
this end : 

i. These ministers need refilling along all lines of 



TRAINING OF THE RURAL MINISTRY 147 

their intellectual life. Whatever special equipment 
they may need in view of their immediate work they 
must, above all things, avoid the narrowing effects of 
intensive specialization. They, therefore, must pre- 
serve their interest in intellectual matters apart from 
and beyond those immediately involved in the rural 
life and work which are theirs. They ought to do 
general reading. They must do strenuous study on 
some theological, scientific, literary, or other subject. 

2. They should also follow some well-devised 
scheme of reading and study in rural matters. Here 
they should become specialists, and they can only be- 
come such by severe toil. As has been said, they do 
not have to become farmers or even know much about 
farming, but they do need to> know the economic, so- 
cial, moral, and religious problems of the rural com- 
munity and know how to utilize the economic, social, 
moral, religious forces for the uplift of their rural 
communities. What they knew last year will not an- 
swer for this year. They must progress. To remain 
stationary is fatal to their effectiveness. 

3. The country minister must supply himself with 
the inspiration, the enthusiasm, the facilities for keep- 
ing up his equipment and preserving himself at the 
highest efficiency. There is not much of these to come 
to him from his field. His great peril is intellectual 
inertia and indolence. He must sit constantly as a 
sentinel over his life, or he will without perceiving it 
drift into a helpless and hopeless state of self-satisfac- 
tion and laziness. Perhaps his most serious problem 
is himself, for it is a most difficult thing to keep one's 



i 4 8 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

self to concert pitch, when there is little or no stimulus 
to do it from one's surroundings. Yet he must do it. 
The one hope of the rural minister against the fatal 
peril of stagnation is that he himself will seize every 
Opportunity to stimulate and enrich his mental and 
spiritual life. 

4. Summer schools offer excellent opportunities for 
help to the country minister. 

There are many of these schools in various parts of 
the country, and some of them are connected with 
theological seminaries. The seminary furnishes an 
Ideal atmosphere Eor this kind of professional revival. 
It is an educational center where the ideals are intel- 
lectual, and at the same time are chastened and en- 
riched by the religious spirit. The inducements to 
Study are potent, while the inducements to pleasure or 
rot are reduced to a minimum. The classroom and 
not platform are featured. Work is the watchword 
and work is what the minister needs most. Work 
under the wise guidance of expert teachers, work in 
some severe theological or other discipline, w r ork in 
the midst of surroundings that suggest and provoke it. 
The seminary summer school furnishes this atmos- 
phere and these stimuli to the rural minister. 

There should be due recognition in the curriculum 
of the school of both general theological studies and 
specialized practical courses. 

The ministers who are alive to the possibilities of 
their calling will be the first to see the value of such 
schools and will allow nothing trivial to deprive them 
of their benefits. To men on small salary the item of 



TRAINING OF THE RURAL MINISTRY 149 

expense is often felt to be prohibitive. Churches could 
hardly make a wiser investment than by sending their 
pastors to one of these schools. They should put the 
item in their annual budget. 

5. Short courses at theological seminaries are de- 
sirable for ministers. 

For pastors in service there is the greatest need of 
educational provision. Of all professions the ministry 
has the least attention from the university or from the 
theological seminary. After the minister is once gradu- 
ated he is left to shift for himself and nothing much 
is done to make him a better preacher, a better shep- 
herd of the flock, a better administrator of the affairs 
of the parish. 

To this end short courses should be provided by the 
seminaries for the ministers in service. They might 
be for a semester or a half of a semester. In these he 
should have teachers rather than text-books, seminar 
or laboratory work in addition to lectures. Every 
man who has been out in the pastorate for five years 
should aim to get this sort of a release from his pastoral 
work and go up to a seminary for eight or fifteen 
weeks. The emphasis that he needs is not inspira- 
tional but intellectual and therefore the seminary is the 
place to which he should go. The seminary might 
easily arrange the schedule of the undergraduate 
classes so as to make some if not all of these short 
courses part of the undergraduate work, and thus 
bring these pastors into the scholastic atmosphere of 
the regular seminary classroom, which would be a 
great gain to the pastors. 



150 THE CHURCH AXD COUNTRY LIFE 

The wider the range of these short courses the 
better for ministers, as in this way they will have a 
large range of subjects from which to make selection, 
and a larger variety of needs and desires may be met. 
If a narrow range vi subjects is alone possible, then 
there should he a fair division between fundamental 
subjects, such as some biblical course or a church his- 
tory course, and specialized subjects, such as rural 
economies or rural sociology. 

6. Correspondence courses for ministers are desira- 
ble. Extension work by the seminaries, through cor- 
respi ►ndence, ought to be well organized and vigorously 
prosecuted. In this way the seminaries might carry 
a d mtinuous stream of influence from the centers of 
sacred learning to many parish studies where outside 
intellectual influences might not otherwise penetrate. 
These courses might cover as wide a range of the- 
ological and allied disciplines as the seminaries might 
find themselves able to manage. 

IV. The Training of Lay Leaders 

This is an important and at the same time a dif- 
ficult part of the task of bringing the country church to 
its best development. It is all too frequently the case 
that the most serious obstacle to the efficiency of the 
country church are the men and women who by every 
consideration should be the progressive leaders but are 
in fact obstinate obstructionists. These persons are 
often found among the officials. Many a pastor has 
come to his task with a vision of the opportunities and 
the duties of the church, or has received a fresh vision 



TRAINING OF THE RURAL MINISTRY 151 

of these, and with enthusiasm and hope has sought to 
put his vision into form and substance, only to find 
that the men and women who could help are deter- 
mined upon hindering him. 

Even under the most favoring conditions of pas- 
toral efficiency, the effectiveness of the country church 
depends in large degree upon trained lay leadership. 
Earnest attention must be given to the task of provid- 
ing adequate training for these leaders. This may be 
accomplished in the following ways : 

1. The pastor should establish classes for the study 
of local church and community problems, economics, 
sociology, church history; organize committees for 
community betterment along one or more lines; ar- 
range for lecture courses with a view to community 
enlightenment; and in other ways utilize local facilities 
and talent. 

2. Little schools of religion should be organized by 
theological seminaries in successive communities under 
the administration of some member of their faculties. 
They should be held for a week for the serious study 
of the Bible, church finance, church efficiency, soci- 
ology, economics, religious education, and other sub- 
jects according to local needs and conditions. Possibly 
the more mature students could be used as helpers in 
these schools, and local people should be largely used, 
even though they may be poorly qualified. Wisely 
managed, these schools may be immensely helpful to 
both pastors and people in many ways and would con- 
stitute a most valuable form of seminary extension. 

3. Seminaries should maintain summer schools for 



152 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

laymen. There are already many conferences and 
assemblies which are of value and there is small need 
to add to their number. But there is need for real 
schools where laymen may be systematically instructed 
in things pertaining to the present church problems 
and their solution. There is no better place for these 
schools than the institutions where their pastors are 
instructed in the same subjects, and there are no better 
teachers for them than the teachers at whose feet their 
pastors have sat. The atmosphere of the seminary is 
favorable to the ends of schools Eor laymen. Under 
the conditions thus suggested the benefit to the lay 
student of a two-weeks' serious study and the resulting 
advantage to the churches and communities are not 
easily measured. 

It may seem that your committee has elaborated an 
extensive program, one, in fact, so extensive as to be 
practically impossible. YVe are not so optimistic as to 
think that all of these things can be done at once by 
any one institution, or one man, or one group of men. 
But it is our hope that out of these various suggestions 
different pastors and churches may be able to make a 
selection of something that is adaptable and workable 
in the conditions in which they have to work. We 
venture to think that every minister and every church 
that wish to come to larger efficiency may find a way 
to accomplish this desire, if they seek for it with all 
their heart. It may be that in this report they may 
find some suggestions that will be of help to them in 
their search. 



TRAINING FOR THE RURAL MINISTRY 153 

TRAINING FOR THE RURAL MINISTRY 
V. G. A. Tresslcr 

It goes without saying that there must be training, 
and already there is great advance; for not so very 
long ago a great part of the American Church was 
quite dubious as to the necessity of much, if any, 
ministerial training for the country worker. But we 
are in the age of training — training, if you please, for 
efficiency — and all of us are restlessly alive to its value, 
its insistency, its primacy. The church is, and it is to 
be. We are not alarmed about its future. It has a 
mission, a message, and a ministry. 

There is to be a church, and it is to have a min- 
istry. We will grant these two points. This ministry 
is for all the world, and this ministry is to be equipped 
for all the world, country and city. How? It is a 
problem, not easy, and yet not so difficult as to defy 
solution. 

The difficulty very largely is our own. We are de- 
fining ministry in the terms of specialization sheerly. 
I am frank to say that in this I hold we mistake. But 
must we specialize for efficiency? Yes and no! Re- 
cently a questionnaire came to my notice on the effect 
of the present world war on higher education. Al- 
most all the educators felt that the effect of the war 
educationally would be very great — great biologically, 
sociologically, economically, historically, and peda- 
gogically. That is, the teaching of these subjects 
would be shifted somewhat owing to the new condi- 



154 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

tion caused by the war. But no one thinks that 
biology will have changed its principle because of the 
war, or that philosophy will have shifted its cate- 
gories, or that history will be enabled to dispense with 
any of it- totality of historic fundamentals. The 
principles of all these subjects abide — only the emphasis 
shifts. Is it not just so with the rural ministry? 
It is rural; yes, — that is merely locative, incidental. 
Rural is the qualitative term only; but ministry — 
that is the determinative, the fundamental, the 
character-giving, significant thing. It is a rural min- 
i-try. That is tlie application in time and space. But 
it is a ministry; that is the essential content. It is not 
a thing of shreds and patches, of township lines or 
county bounds or confines of a commonwealth. This 
rural ministry is really not a rural ministry at all in 
its most cogent definition. It is only a rurally local- 
ized ministry of an inherently illocalized grace. 
True, it deals with a situation — the situation 
and condition of the century, the year, the local- 
ity, the season, and all that. Granted. It cannot 
overlook the character and condition of its populace, 
whether miners or farmers or shopmen or schoolmen. 
Certainly not. Yet we must insist that the rural is 
not the determining factor. That factor is ministry — 
" the ministry," the gospel ministry, the " apostolos," 
the " sent one," the " karux," the herald, the " an- 
gelos," the messenger; the man who truly, like the 
early apostles, goes out and is quite confident that 
" we are witnesses of these things." So we notice 
after all the real minister is not a rural minister; he 



TRAINING FOR THE RURAL MINISTRY 155 

is a rural minister. It is not the country condition 
that is the chief thing; it is the human condition. Ah, 
yes ! But the situation is bad, you say — poor crops, 
renters, bad land, mean spirit, little cooperation, gen- 
eral lassitude, inhibition of the civic motor centers. 
A bad situation ! Let us see. It may be even captious 
to remark that the ministry of the gospel is not said 
to save from a situation at all, though it incidentally, 
doubtless often, does that also; but rather to save from 
— let me say it — to save from sin. " Being made free 
from ' the situation.' " " You being dead through 
your ' situation.' " " Where remission of these is, 
there is no more offering for ' the situation.' " It 
scarcely sounds natural, does it ? 

It is not social service as such the ministry con- 
serves, but a deeper thing, and one which undoubtedly 
results in social service. The Old Testament speaks 
of the poor, but Christ of " the poor in spirit," and to 
them is a kingdom — the kingdom of heaven. The 
Old Testament speaks of hunger, but Christ of " those 
that hunger and thirst after righteousness." " The 
gospel is the glad tidings of benefits that pass not 
away. Its end is redemption and not social improve- 
ment." This is the characteristic way in which Adolf 
Harnack begins his treatise on the " Social Gospel." 
No one thinks that Professor Harnack is theologically 
straitened, nor that he is cramped in his definition by 
dogmatic presumptions. 

The rural ministry, then, is to be, and, by rights, 
ought to be, prepared for its end. That end, accord- 
ing to Harnack, is redemption. 



156 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

But this redemptive end has also its corollaries with 
reference to this life. There is the quietistic principle 
— " Fear not " — acquiesce in the leadings of God. But 
the same authority that commands, "Love not the 
world, neither the things that are in the world,'' turns 
to other men among whom we live and says, " Love 
thy neighbor as thyself.'' Here we have the principle 
of love as a social regeneration. " I was hungry, and 
ye gave me to eat; ... I was in prison, and ye came 
unto me." 

H. A. Franke, who did Christlike orphan work in 
Halle in [694, received the impulse to his world-famed 
work by Paul's word: " God is able to make all grace 
abound unto you; that ye, having always all sufficiency 
in everything, may abound unto every good work." 
The rural minister of the gospel gets his cue, like the 
rest of us, here. The cup of cold water — that is for 
the twentieth century. The social uplift necessary 
must be given. But it must be given in his name, and 
the recipient must know it. The rural minister must 
be trained to see; and hence must be sharp to see the 
need. He ministers. It is to the man and for the man 
in the country, but it is in the power of the Son of 
man, and with his sanction. It is to the community 
and for the community, in the power of the kingdom 
of God. 

Pastor Wichern, the founder of the Inner Mission, 
so greatly helpful to Europe and America, puts it this 
way ; It is " the collective and not isolated labor of 
love which springs from faith in Christ, and which 
seeks to bring about the internal and external renewal 



TRAINING FOR THE RURAL MINISTRY 157 

of the masses within Christendom who have fallen 
under the dominion of those evils which result di- 
rectly and indirectly from sin; and who are not 
reached, as for their spiritual renewal they ought to 
be, by the established official organs of the church. 
It does not overlook any external need, the relief of 
which can be made an object of Christian love. It 
recognizes the Christ-bought and indestructible unity 
of life in state and church, in the nation and family, 
in all the ranks of Christian society, and lays hold of 
it with its saving powers. And amid the extraor- 
dinary and distorted conditions of the present, before 
which those in authority are impotent, and the church 
is silent, it distinguishes the voice of the people as 
those who ask for its saving work." The rural min- 
ister must be trained for this. Again Wichern says: 
" The Inner Mission is the unfolding and active ex- 
ercise of the faith and vital powers of the entire body 
of believers . . . for the conquest of everything un- 
christian and antichristian that seeks or has found a 
place in the home or community." Also for this the 
rural minister must be trained. 

May I quote again the Lutheran Church's idea as to 
how this rural minister has to be trained, — an idea 
expressed in a report adopted in May, 191 5, in devel- 
oping and urging upon the church this cult of the 
Inner Mission? "The primary idea is the aim to 
realize a wonderful vision of the Christian church — 
one which the present age can well understand. It is 
a true vision of what the church must be. It is one 
which has been seen in our country very dimly by 



158 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

institutional churches, Men and Religion Forward 

Movements, social service, men's and women's and 
young people's societies, etc.; but they have been be- 
holding very narrowly and uncertainly what Inner 
Mission has for years been seeing. 

" This idea is to realize the universal priesthood of 
all believers; to reestablish the primitive ideal of Chris- 
tianity, s<> that I iving service to a needy world becomes 
the manifest sign wherever there is a Christian; to 
have the church ( the entire church, mark it) prove her 
faith by her saving love. It is thus the idea of Inner 
Mission to put the entire so-called laity into the Sa- 
maritan attitude of vital, personal touch with need. 
The prime aim must, therefore, always be congrega- 
tional development. The unused strength of mem- 
bers is to be developed and the minister must be trained 
for this. There must be an increased force of real 
Christian ministry in every rural congregation. Inner 
Mission's ideal is to have the entire conscious church 
in sendee. It emphasizes the constantly forgotten, de- 
spised fact that it is the cJiureh (not just pastors and 
deaconesses) to which the commission is given of car- 
rying out Christ's work upon earth. Rural congrega- 
tions must more largely gain the idea of personal, 
loving service of men for Jesus' sake. Inner Mission 
is the church's endeavor to make real to-day what 
Christ was in his day — a person going about doing 
good; it is the Christ of yesterday and to-day, going 
about in the person of his members, applying the balm 
of Gilead to the world's open sore, whether mental, 
moral, or physical — and always, as with Christ, for 



TRAINING FOR THE RURAL MINISTRY 159 

the purpose of reaching the depth of the wound, sin. 

" It is manifest thus that, were this ideal of Inner 
Mission fully realized, many present institutions of 
mercy would not be needed at all. For instance, no 
homes for orphans or for the aged would be needed; 
for every orphan and lonely aged person would find 
that some Christian household was glad to provide in 
its own circle a loving home. No hospice would be 
needed in any city, for every strange young man going 
to a city from the country would be welcomed to the 
fireside of some Christian family." 

But what has this to do with the training? Every- 
thing, — for we must first have the diagnosis and then 
the prescription. Now then, we come to the training 
for it ! 

At least one fact is patent. There must be certainty 
about the thing which the rural minister has to do with. 
Principal Forsyth says the church has exchanged cer- 
tainty for sympathy. Mr. Berle in his Christianity 
and the Social Rage well says : " The prevailing theory 
of religious teaching seems to be that the facts of re- 
ligion, and especially the facts of biblical history, can 
be preached in a perfectly dispassionate way, and that 
this is religious teaching. But, as a matter of fact, 
this is not religious teaching, and cannot ever become 
such. . . . Mr. Webster, in his great speech on Samuel 
Dexter, uses these words : ' He had studied the Consti- 
tution that he might defend it. He had examined its 
principles that he might maintain them. . . . His in- 
ference seemed demonstration. The earnestness of his 
own conviction wrought conviction in others. One was 



160 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

convinced, and believed, and assented, because it was 
gratifying, delightful, to think, to feel, and believe, in 
unison with an intellect of such evident superiority. 
. . . He studied the Constitution that he might defend 
it.' This is no accidental choice of words. Mr. Web- 
ster knew exactly what he meant when he chose the 
word 'defend.' Now the teaching of religion, in a 
peculiar and exceptional sense, requires just this ele- 
ment. Religious opinions, and especially religious 
faith, are always in danger of assault by the careless, 
the unbelieving, and the ungodly. It is notorious that 
no opinions in this world have to run the gauntlet of 
indifference and hostility to the degree that religious 
opinions do. Therefore it requires, in a peculiar and 
exceptional sense, an underpinning of conviction 
girded with weapons of defense. . . . Observe again, 
if you please, the vocabulary which Mr. Webster em- 
ploys in speaking of Samuel Dexter's persuasiveness 
in his pleading : ' One was convinced, and believed, and 
assented.' Is not this the language which we habitu- 
ally employ in religion? Is it not the supremest pur- 
pose of all Christian teaching to convince, to cause to 
believe, and to win assent? And if, as Mr. Webster 
says, conviction, namely, a position to maintain and 
uphold, is necessary to secure these results in the law, 
how much more true is it in the matter of religion! 
The attitude of intellectual catholicity in these matters 
is the merest pretense. Men cannot be colorless in 
religion. Convictions are convictions precisely because 
they have color, and are differentiated from other con- 
victions. The idea that religion can be taught, or that 



TRAINING FOR THE RURAL MINISTRY 161 

anything but the barest facts of religious history can 
be taught, without at the same time having in the 
preacher a great passion to win his hearers to his own 
attitude of obedience and reverence, is as absurd as to 
imagine that merely to cause a sick man to look at a 
prescription is to take effective measures for his 
restoration. . . . The objective point in rural or city 
religious instruction is to convince: that involves ad- 
vocacy. Its purpose is to secure belief : that involves 
conviction. Its aim is to gain assent: that involves 
faith in the thing expounded. . . . Better far inde- 
fensible doctrine with a brave heart and an unswerving 
faith behind it, than a defensible doctrine with a wa- 
vering, insecure, dilettante proclaiming of it. We 
plead for conviction in teaching." 

But a recent report of social conditions in New Eng- 
land states that seventy-five per cent, of the ministers 
were inadequate in general educational equipment. 
This is to be remedied — is already remedied — by the 
focalizing of the attention of the whole church upon 
the vast importance of the rural field. If the church 
holds it important, then young men in the ministry 
will do the same. They will look toward it buoyantly, 
ardently. They will esteem what the church esteems. 
But the minister holds the key to the situation. He 
must beget a new rural consciousness, a new unity and 
community. He must deepen the sense of the church's 
mission, life, ideals, service, and sacrifice. He must 
raise the church's estimate of itself, of its local power, 
because it is a church. The rural ministry must get 
the country's strong men, its stored-up vitality, its 



162 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

reserves of energy, and its independence, and hook 
them up in and for the gospel. But how? First, the 
rural ministry must have a native strength — no cheap 
men. no low-grade men for the rural church. No 
low-grade men for the church anywhere; in any event, 
not in this time of ours. Our rural minister, fitted 
naturally, must be further fitted by a general the- 
ological education, a theological education of the 
twentieth century, but still a theological education, and 
not, preeminently, any Other. For the minister must 
be equipped in the field of the spirit; that is his 
specialty. "On its divine side it includes God in 
Christ; on its human side the soul. From the near 
view it is concerned with the commonplaces of conduct 
and character; from the far view with the mysteries 
of immortality and revelation/' And hence the min- 
ister must have a wide range of knowledge, for all 
problems are included in his function in the country 
as well as in the city. 

The rural minister is to be trained to be a preacher. 
Phillips Brooks has said that preaching is " the com- 
munication of truth by man to man. It has in it the 
two elements, truth and personality." The rural min- 
ister must have both. The training, therefore, must 
consist, first, in that natural selection which will find 
and develop proper personalities — men who under- 
stand the quality of the task and are not daunted 
thereby; and, second, in the injection, if you please, 
into these ministerial workmen the graces of the gos- 
pel, that is, the present-day applications of an abiding 
grace. In other words, they must have that training 



TRAINING FOR THE RURAL MINISTRY 163 

which will hold them to the distinctly spiritual point 
of view. 

May I here append a most expressive excerpt from 
a recent widely read periodical ? " There are certain 
spheres of influence in which a minister is at a dis- 
count because of his professional standing. But he 
is not thereby shut out from a part in the development 
of modern society. Jesus did not legislate by specific 
acts, regulations, and by-laws, but by the proclamation 
of determinative principles. Those principles are as 
applicable to-day as they were sixty generations ago. 

" It is the minister's privilege to show the relevance 
of those principles to modern life; to bring them to 
bear upon such problems as local option, factory regu- 
lation, child labor, workmen's compensation, capital 
and labor, trade competition, penology, and a hundred 
kindred themes. If he can lay the divine compulsions 
of such principles upon the men who fall within his 
pastoral domain, he will have become a social, civic, 
and political power of the first order without jeopardiz- 
ing his influence by plunging into a game for which 
he has had no training and to which he cannot give 
adequate time without sacrificing his own unique re- 
sponsibilities and privileges. The minister's chief op- 
portunity, therefore, lies in filling his lay units — men, 
women, and children — with the ideals and enthusiasms 
of righteousness, that they may carry the gospel in- 
carnate into every engagement and relationship of 
every day. 

" Now if the clergyman can flood the souls of men 
and women with the life of God, all the problems of 



1 64 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

the church will be mere minor affairs; just questions 
of methods and mechanics of application. The 
standard of the minister to-day is to keep his people 
in touch with the Source of spiritual energy, and thus 
make the spasmodic, forlorn-hope revivalistic cam- 
paign superfluous. When men and women are athrob 
with divine motives, they will quickly find effective 
modes of expression, and the church will serve the 
D mmunity in many forms of constructive, social, civic, 
and ameliorative service. It is the deliberate opinion 
of those who have studied the church most carefully, 
from both the inside and the outside, that its problem 
is qualitative rather than quantitative, an organic ques- 
tion rather than a question of organization." 
Very well, then, we will train for this! 



THE EDUCATION OF THE RURAL 

MINISTRY 

jr. K. Tate 

In the admirable report just presented by the Com- 
mittee I find this thought which I shall use as my text : 
" The main perils of the country minister are intel- 
lectual indolence and stagnation, and if he is to escape 
these perils he must be his own guardian and guide." 
I should modify the sentence to read as follows: The 
main perils of the country minister are intellectual 
indolence and stagnation and a failure to interpret the 



EDUCATION OF THE RURAL MINISTRY 165 

message of Christ in terms of rural life; if he is to 
escape these perils, he must catch a new vision of the 
country and must have a different sort of education 
from that which he has received in the past. 

It is conceivable that any kind of education to which 
a man earnestly devotes his energies might give him 
the capacity of persistent mental toil, might cultivate 
his powers of observation, reflection, and insight, might 
produce what we ordinarily call a well-disciplined 
mind, and might give to the possessor a keen relish 
for intellectual pursuits related to his field of study. 
It is difficult, however, to think of intellectual mo- 
mentum generated in a special realm of ideas as able 
to project itself into an unfamiliar realm dominated 
by strange ideas and to continue there its energy in- 
definitely. The education which we have been giving 
our ministers has not intellectualized the country en- 
vironment and activity. 

I once knew a Jewish scholar who came over from 
Russia to America. He was well educated in the lan- 
guage and lore of his people. By chance he was 
thrown into a commercial community into whose ac- 
tivities he could not enter with knowledge or sympathy. 
Deprived of the impulse of old associations, his 
scholarly habits gradually disintegrated without a cor- 
responding adaptation of mental life to new stimuli. 
The result was stagnation and decay. This is a 
common tragedy among our immigrant population. 
The minister trained in the ordinary theological sem- 
inary who goes to a country charge is in like manner 
an immigrant into conditions which his course of 



1 66 THE CHURCH AXD COUNTRY LIFE 

study does not enable him to interpret intellectually. 
In the city he is associated with men of similar training 
in an intellectual world where symbols are not habitu- 
ally reduced to hard, plain realities, where checks, com- 
mercial, intellectual, and spiritual pass freely at face 
value and the substantial gold is rarely demanded. In 
this environment he is able to maintain a certain con- 
tinuity in mental life which at least conceals the evi- 
dences of bankruptcy. When he goes back to the 
country, however, he enters a world in which his 
scholastic counters are not accepted as coin of the 
realm. The gradual retirement of these counters from 
circulation we call mental stagnation; " the indisposi- 
tion or inability to acquire a capital of solid realities 
based on the eternal facts of nature and life, we call 
" indolence." 

We are not surprised at the discomfort of such a 
man in the country. For years he has lived in the 
world of Moses, Isaiah, and St. Paul, in a laudable 
effort to discover the spiritual message of the ages. 
He has studied the customs, philosophies, and lan- 
guages of ancient peoples as the media through which 
divine truth has been revealed to man. Gradually he 
comes to live in this ancient world; it becomes his 
source of story and illustration; his speech is filled 
with conventional phrases taken from its literature, 
phrases which were once pregnant with meaning but 
are now empty symbols. He forgets that the truth, 
to become vital in the lives of modern farmers, must 
be delivered to them in the living language of today. 
How otherwise can it be recognized as a message? 



EDUCATION OF THE RURAL MINISTRY 167 

We forget too easily that the entire life and teaching 
of the Master Teacher were a protest and a revolt 
against formalism, tradition, and ritualism in religion 
and a statement of eternal truth in the every-day lan- 
guage of his hearers. They " were astonished at his 
teaching : for he taught them as one having authority, 
and not as their scribes. " 

The country preacher must know the country and 
country people. As he walks by the wayside the 
plants, the flowers, the birds, the insects, the crops, 
and the people must appeal to his eyes and his ears. 
The flower in the crannied wall and the stars overhead 
must help reveal God and man. The commonplace 
things around him must suggest thought and prevent 
mental stagnation and indolence. Christ delivered his 
message to farmers in terms of their farm activities. 
The sower who went forth to sow, the grain of mus- 
tard seed, the wheat and the tares, the sheep that had 
gone astray, and all the other matchlessly simple stories 
of the Kingdom conveyed truth to farmers in the lan- 
guage of farm life. If he were to speak a personal 
message to American farmers to-day, he would doubt- 
less deliver these truths in terms of silos, crop rotation, 
animal husbandry, seed selection, cooperation, and the 
other facts of modern agriculture. 

The training of the country minister should include 
the following: (1) the sciences underlying farm life, 
especially the biological sciences; (2) enough agricul- 
ture to allow the free use of this subject as a source 
of illustration; (3) constructive rural sociology; (4) 
rural recreation; (5) a study of the changing ideals of 



1 68 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

rural education; (6) rural economics, especially as it 
relates to community organization. 

These subjects should he included in the course 
even if their inclusion should make necessary the elim- 
ination of Greek, Hebrew, comparative religion, or 
other subjects which are now a part of the theological 
course. That the old course of training for ministers 
does not meet country needs is evident from the fact 
that the churches which have insisted most strongly on 
an educated mini-try have all but disappeared from 
the country. The type of education which the min- 
ister received really unfitted him for rural service and 
left this field to denominations which are less exact- 
ing in their educational demand. The trouble has been 
not too much education but the wrong kind. 

The church and the school are the two social institu- 
tions of the country. These two institutions must 
divide between them the field which in the city would 
be parceled out among a dozen social organizations. 
The training of the country minister must be much 
broader and more general than that required of the 
city preacher. His activities must be much more 
varied. In assuming some of these new duties the 
church has numerous precedents. The Roman Cath- 
olic priest was the original farm demonstration agent 
in America. The church has always exercised some 
supervision over amusement and recreation. The rural 
clergyman in Ireland, in Denmark, and in Germany is 
usually the leader in the great cooperative movement 
which has revolutionized rural life in those countries. 
The country church is the primary source of church- 



EDUCATION OF THE RURAL MINISTRY 169 

membership both for country and city; that church will 
survive which trains its ministers to meet the new con- 
ditions which now confront rural life in America. 

The country church not only needs preachers who 
appreciate country life and who are especially trained 
to work in country communities, but it also needs in- 
telligent lay workers and teachers who have been espe- 
cially trained for rural service. Evidently the training 
of these workers offers the finest field of service for 
the church college in America. Many of these colleges 
have not yet found themselves. They are merely lib- 
eral arts colleges of the older type whose aims are to 
develop Christian character and to disseminate the 
principles of religion. They occupy positions of influ- 
ence and their patronage is largely drawn from the 
rural section. If their aims and purposes were made 
more definite and their curriculum included courses in 
rural sociology, rural education, agriculture, rural eco- 
nomics, and other subjects offering definite training for 
rural leadership, they might easily within fifty years 
revolutionize country life and the country church in 
America. 



i;o THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

FINANCING THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

(Report of Committee) 

G. Walter Fiske, Chairman. C. P. Dodge, A. R. 
Manx, A. K. Roberts, J. P. Sanderson. 

In studying this problem your Committee realize that 
they are c< mfri >nted by one of the two most serious and 
persistent difficulties of the country church. The trite 
witticism that the rural ministry is " trying to live on 
earth and board in heaven " is not far from the facts. 
How thousands of country ministers live is a mystery 
this Committe will not attempt to explain, for they 
are certainly not paid a living salary, a salary sufficient 
to support a family. When it is true that the average 
salary of country ministers is less than $600, it is seen 
at once that thousands of men must be receiving con- 
siderably less to bring the average so low. Hod- 
carriers in Xew York earn $900 a year; but in one 
large denomination in America the country ministers 
are reported to receive on the average $325. It is 
obvious that these ministers must supplement their in- 
come by other work during the week or else depend 
upon the labor of their wives and children. 

It is not necessary for this report to recite stories of 
hardships endured by country ministers, often heroic- 
ally suffered uncomplainingly, and shared by patient, 
devoted wives who bear the burden even more directly 
than their husbands. We will not waste time proving 
an axiom. The pitiably meager salaries paid by thou- 
sands of country churches are below the level of un- 



FINANCING THE COUNTRY CHURCH 171 

skilled laborers' wages, below the minimum wage on 
which a family can be decently supported, and far 
below the level of efficiency. The primary question is, 
Why are these salaries so low? A variety of answers 
should be suggested. It is fair to admit that some local 
churches are too poor to pay larger salaries. It is true 
that most professionally trained ministers are receiving 
living salaries and that the smallest salaries are paid 
the untrained men. It is evident that there is an over- 
supply of untrained preachers, and this is depressing 
salaries just as wages are depressed in any trade by a 
surplus of labor. In most denominations it is so easy 
to get into the rural ministry, with standards so low 
and requirements so meager that any pious man who 
has some talent as a speaker can readily find an oppor- 
tunity to supply some pulpit. This is not saying there 
is an oversupply of ministers. There is a constant need 
of trained men everywhere in the country churches; 
but there are far too many unprepared and poorly 
equipped. There is doubtless a real field for lay 
preachers. But too many of them have received ordi- 
nation with no more than a layman's training. 

Financial Effect of Non-resident Preaching 

The chief reason for the low salaries of rural min- 
isters is the absentee preacher system. We speak of 
it as a system because it is such a wide-spread and set- 
tled custom. In many parts of the country the ma- 
jority of country pastors are really not pastors but 
preachers only, not living on the land with their people, 
but in near-by villages or even far-away towns. In 



172 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

Ohio only six per cent, of country churches have resi- 
lient pastors, and the proportion is doubtless smaller 
than that in most Western and Southern states. Very 
many of these non-resident preachers are engaged six 
days in the week in other employment, as teachers, 
students, lawyers, insurance agents, real estate dealers, 
merchants, and in various other lines of business. 
Even though their service in the pulpit be high grade, 
it is usually simply Sunday work, and often covers but 
three or four hours altogether, so that the fee they are 
paid seems to the people quite adequate in payment 
for the service rendered and the time spent. This ex- 
plain- a great many low salaries. In many cases no 
special hardship is involved, for the minister is a 
tradesman or business man the rest of the week and 
is presumably earning a living for his family. This is 
a perfectly honorable thing for him to do, and we are 
not criticizing him. But it is poor policy for the coun- 
try church to hire him as a substitute for a real pastor 
who lives with his people. If the church will not pay 
more than a one-seventh salary, however, it must be 
contented with one seventh of a minister's week. A 
great many of these absentee preachers are earnest 
men who would gladly give all their time to the church 
and community if a fair support could be assured them. 
Many of them have had several resident pastorates, on 
small salaries, but with the growing needs of their 
families they have been obliged to retire from the pas- 
torate and enter some form of business. There is a 
constant and apparently an increasing leakage from the 
ranks of the ministry, year after year, of such men. 



FINANCING THE COUNTRY CHURCH 173 

Doubtless a man's first responsibility is to his wife and 
children, and if the church will not give him adequate 
support, we cannot criticize him for giving up an im- 
possible struggle and getting an honorable living as 
best he can. We see, however, in these numerous 
cases a serious symptom which may not be over- 
looked. 

To be sure, a large proportion of absentee preachers 
with meager salaries, or rather, with the single day's 
wage, are ministers in charge of a circuit, dividing 
their time between two, three, four, or even seven 
churches. This circuit system has been too long estab- 
lished and has had too honorable a record in American 
church history to be lightly appreciated. A distin- 
guished list of faithful leaders of the church might 
be recalled of men who have begun as " circuit- 
riders " and have rendered great service to the king- 
dom of God. Unquestionably in pioneer days the 
circuit system was necessary, and it is still required 
for a widely-scattered rural population; but in the 
large majority of cases where it is still found, the 
circuit system seems to be serving sectarian interests 
rather than community welfare. The circuit system 
is not a good thing for the community. It is surely 
better for the rural community to have one strong 
church, uniting the Christian forces under the leader- 
ship of a resident pastor, than it is to lack the com- 
munity pastor and to have three or four little strug- 
gling preaching stations, manned once a week or twice 
a month by preachers who live elsewhere. Can we 
blame such a community if it refuses to pay more 



174 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

than a pittance for such meager service? Especially 
unfortunate are the cases where it is evident that 
services are maintained at the little church at the 
cross-roads, not because there is any real need there, 
but because the contributions of the little church are 
needed by the denomination to eke out the salary of 
the minister at the village five or ten miles away who 
includes this church in his circuit. Thus the open 
country community is exploited in the interest of the 
village. 

These facts are cited simply to explain some of 
the reasons lot the low average salary of the rural 
ministry. If statistics were available, we should prob- 
ably be able to prove that most ministers who are 
adequately trained and are devoting their full time to 
the work of a single church are receiving a fairly 
reasonable support. Such ministers and churches, 
however, form a very small minority in the rural 
church life of America, particularly in the West and 
South. In general we find the situation extremely un- 
satisfactory both for the ministers and the churches, 
with really efficient service of the country communities 
all but impossible. The large majority of rural min- 
isters are making a great struggle to care for their 
families, with inadequate support, while every year 
the struggle is getting more difficult, and many are 
giving it up as impossible. 

Is the Rural Ministry a Life Work? 

This problem of financing the country church in- 
volves the question of the permanency and status of 



FINANCING THE COUNTRY CHURCH 175 

the rural ministry. Too long it has been lightly re- 
garded as merely a stepping-stone to the city min- 
istry, a temporary makeshift for young ministers 
while they are making their first blunders and experi- 
ments in the pastorate. Some of us have come to feel 
that the efficient rural ministry is a specialized min- 
istry, just as the city ministry should be, requiring 
some special fitness and specialized preparation and 
adaptation. If so, it should be a ministry for life. 
It would be a distinct waste to fit a man for effective 
rural work only to have him devote the years of his 
prime to the city field. Meanwhile, earnest young 
men who love the country and have heard the coun- 
try's call are asking, " Is there a life-work for me in 
the rural ministry?" Some of them are making the 
venture of faith and propose to give their life to the 
rural work. For many this will be essentially home 
missionary work. In one of the oldest denominations 
in America one third of the ministers are home mis- 
sionaries. Several large denominations are prac- 
tically all rural. Is it not reasonable to argue that 
the young man considering the home mission field as 
a life-work should be respected as much as his brother 
who goes to the foreign field for life? Is it too much 
to expect that the church should treat the home mis- 
sionary as well as the foreign missionary? Foreign 
mission boards guarantee the support of their mis- 
sionaries. The stipends which they pay them are not 
regarded as salaries but simply as support, and they 
usually are adequate. This committee wishes to sug- 
gest the same consideration for the country minister 



i;6 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

who enters the rural work for life. If he is a thor- 
oughly consecrated and well-equipped man, let us 
treat him as well as we treat the foreign missionary. 
Let the church sustain him and his family. How can 
any denomination lie self-respecting and do less? 

Home and Foreign Missionary Finances 
Compared 

And yet the fact is we are sending many of our 
ablest college and seminary men to the foreign field 
and very lew of them into the country ministry for 
life. This is partly because there is a decent support 
for an educated man and his family on the foreign 
Held, whereas the financial struggle is twice as dif- 
ficult in the average country parsonage. If this 
condition c< >ntinues indefinitely, how can we escape 
getting a peasant ministry in our own rural America 
inferior in even- respect to the leadership of 
the church in foreign fields? This is a real menace 
which threatens us at no distant date unless organ- 
ized Christendom in America unites to solve this prob- 
lem of financing the country church. Interest in all 
phases of country life is rapidly developing. Splendid 
young men in our classical colleges and our agricul- 
tural schools are anxious to go into the rural ministry 
for life. But they want a life chance. They must 
have a living wage. 

The. issue of comparison between rural ministers' 
salaries and foreign missionaries' salaries having been 
raised, a few words more must be said to justify our 
suggestion. In raising the issue we must not be mis- 



FINANCING THE COUNTRY CHURCH 177 

understood. We do not believe any worthy missionary 
is overpaid. No one can accuse any foreign mission- 
ary board of being too generous with the men and 
women who go into voluntary exile for Christ's sake. 
The most generous stipends paid by any missionary 
board are none too generous; but the fact remains 
that they are far beyond the salaries of the rural 
ministry. This committee has courteously been fur- 
nished full statements by the leading foreign mission 
boards of America as to their financial provision for 
their missionaries on the field. We have also ascer- 
tained the salary status in every American foreign 
mission board six years ago. In every instance, 
though differing in details, the policy is the same. A 
living salary is guaranteed the missionary. Current 
costs of living are carefully studied and compared, 
in the different fields, on the basis of which a definite 
sum is allowed an unmarried man or woman, a married 
man without children, and a man with a family, an 
additional allowance being provided for each child. 
All this is thoroughly reasonable and Christian. No 
church can honorably do less. It would be criminal 
to send more young men and women to China, Africa, 
or Turkey than we can support. 

And yet that is exactly what we have been doing 
in rural America. Probably all denominations, in 
the eager days of church promotion in the pioneer 
development of our country, started far more local 
churches than they can adequately man with trained 
ministers now, and are ordaining far more men for 
these churches than they are able to support with a 



i;S THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

living wage. We hare had too much church expansion 
at the sacrifice of ministerial efficiency. The cost of 
it all is the pinching poverty in the country parsonage. 

Comparisons are of course dangerous and never 
quite fair; but making all due allowance, let us com- 
pare the family budgets of the rural minister and the 
foreign missionary. The lowest foreign missionary 
salary we have been able to discover now paid by any 
strong church board to an ordained married man is 
i in a station in Africa; but in addition to this 
" basal salary " he is given an extra allowance for 
rent, free medical attendance, and a children's allow- 
ance of $100 for each child under ten and $150 for 
each child between ten and twenty. The average in- 
come of a foreign missionary is considerably above 
this. One prominent board reports " average total 
salary" in Ceylon, $ 1,700; other parts of India, 
$1,500 to $1,600; China, $1,200 to $1,600; South 
Africa, minimum $1,265, maximum $2,500; Japan, 
minimum $1,665, maximum $2,500. 

Another denomination, paying very low salaries to 
rural pastors at home, pays its foreign missionaries as 
follows; In Japan, basal salary $1,400 to $1,900; 
Korea, $1,200; China, $1,050; North China, $1,200; 
Africa, $1,000. In addition to the above basal salaries, 
an allowance of $100 to $150 is granted for each 
child, according to circumstances. We realize of 
course the difficulty of making adequate comparisons 
of the costs of living in various mission fields and in 
America. Opinions differ as to the facts. Missionary 
secretaries find it difficult to strike an average in a 



FINANCING THE COUNTRY CHURCH 179 

situation where butter costs seventy-five cents a pound 
but where servants can be hired for a few cents, or 
from a nickel to a dime per day. In treaty ports 
abroad, living is doubtless expensive, but elsewhere it 
will probably average cheaper than in America. Un- 
questionably the cost of living is now rising in most 
mission stations, and several leading foreign boards 
are about to raise their salary scale accordingly. 

These missionary salaries are all too small when 
one considers the high character and ability of the 
men receiving them and the high cost of maintaining 
an American home in foreign lands; but it is a sure 
and steady support for the family, with old age usu- 
ally provided for. One foreign board pays the mis- 
sionary's wife an extra allowance of $400 to $600, 
and all boards pay married men more than single, 
which is only fair recognition of the wife's services. 
In the home missionary field unmarried men are not 
wanted at all; and, although ministers' wives are al- 
ways expected to help earn the salary, who ever heard 
of one being paid for her services? While living 
abroad is expensive in the mission stations, domestic 
service is plentiful and very cheap, whereas the home 
missionary's wife can seldom afford such a luxury as 
any sort of servant. The foreign missionary allow- 
ance of $100 to $200 for each child is small compensa- 
tion for the great tragedy of the missionary's home, 
the separation of the family when the children have 
to go home to America to be educated. But the 
tragedy in the rural minister's home is sometimes more 
serious than that. He is usually forced to live where 



i8o THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

the schools are poor, often where there is no high 
school; and he has no income to educate his children 
away f n an h< ime. Consequently he must go to an- 
other field or find ether work; otherwise, as frequently 
happens, his children grow up with less educational 
advantages and a poorer start in life than their father, 
and so the social status of the family is lowered in 
the next generation. Hundreds of rural pastors are 
pleading for a change of pastorate so that they can 
provide better school privileges for their children. 
For this vital reason many leave the rural ministry 
altogether. 

A Living Salary for Country Pastors 

Enough has been said to show how much more 
considerately the great churches have provided for 
their foreign missionaries than they have for their 
home missionaries. Yet all they have done for the 
foreign missionary is to furnish him a living. We 
plead for a living salary for the rural pastor. This 
committee sent to one hundred and fifty representa- 
tive men, vitally interested in rural welfare, including 
all the members of this Federal Council Commission 
on the Church and Country Life, the following ques- 
tion : " Should country pastors be guaranteed at least 
the ' minimum wage ' ? " (meaning of course an income 
on which the average American family of five can 
live). Only one emphatic negative was received, and 
that from a country minister who said, " Some of us 
are not worth $.85 a year." Another minister said, 
" I doubt it. Some get all they are worth." A large 



FINANCING THE COUNTRY CHURCH 181 

number of replies favor the adoption of the minimum 
salary for pastors as a matter of simple justice, the 
figures suggested varying from $750 to $1,000. One 
conspicuously successful country minister suggests: 
" I am sure that no country pastor can support a 
family and do efficient work on less than the ' mini- 
mum wage ' of $750, though I do not like to call it 
a wage. I think a minister's living should be on an 
average with his people. As that varies in different 
localities, it is difficult to standardize it in terms of 
money." A distinguished member of our Commission 
suggests that the minister's income should not be less 
than that of the local school principal or superin- 
tendent, when the two men are " of equal character, 
education, and experience." A similar suggestion 
comes from several, that the minister's salary should 
be on a par with that of married teachers, doctors, 
and other professional men in the community. 

The root of the matter is tapped by this reply from 
a general superintendent on the Pacific coast : " I be- 
lieve in country pastors being guaranteed not less 
than a minimum salary, providing there may be se- 
cured in return a fixed level of efficiency." This 
touches the weak spot in the rural ministry. It cannot 
be denied that standards of efficiency are low and that 
any sort of a guaranty, universally applied, would be 
a reckless policy, unless standards of preparation and 
of service can be raised. It is possible for closely 
organized denominations to set a standard for their 
local churches; and likewise home missionary boards 
can decide upon the minimum salary they will guar- 



[82 THE CHURCH AXD COUNTRY LIFE 

antee their pastors. This is already done in some 
quarters, and where the hoards can guide the selec- 
tion of the men, it is just as feasible as in the case 
of the foreign boards. But self-supporting churches 

will continue to select their own pastors and deter- 
mine their own salaries. They will not brook dicta- 
tion, and least of all on this question of finance. The 
campaign that wins with them must be a campaign 
of education. We must prove to them that they cannot 
afford to run a cheap church; that efficiency demands 
a well-paid minister who can earn his salary; that it 
is ca-ier to raise $1,000 a year for a man who is worth 
it than to pay $600 to a man who really earns no more. 
Let us advocate the simple justice of a living icage for 
live ministers. Then let us discover, through country 
church commissi' ins and committees in conferences and 
syn< ds, what a respectable living salary in that section 
must be, and suggest this as a minimum point below 
which the worthy minister should not be asked to live. 
In general the pastor should be assured at least the 
average living enjoyed by his people. 

Yet in every instance the pastor must prove him- 
self worthy of his support. It would be folly to take 
away incentive by too easily assured income. Doubt- 
less it must remain true that an unskilled, poorly 
equipped minister will receive an unskilled laborer's 
wage. It is probably fair that a non-resident preacher 
should receive but one or two days' pay per week. In- 
efficiency or laziness must not be condoned or rewarded. 
But a concerted effort should be made to safeguard the 
family of the worthy pastor from suffering and pov- 



FINANCING THE COUNTRY CHURCH 183 

erty. The difficulty involved does not excuse us from 
undertaking it if it is just and right. As one of our 
Commission suggests : " Churches receiving stated aid 
from mission boards may be brought to accept a better 
plan without difficulty. Churches which are attempt- 
ing to support themselves can probably be led into it 
through the persuasive influence of their state organ- 
ization," 

Larger Salaries Make for Efficiency 

When the country church honestly desires to do 
more than merely keep the church machinery going, it 
is not difficult to apply the efficiency argument. It 
never pays to pay less than a workman is worth, not 
simply because of the danger of losing him, but be- 
cause he cannot do his best work. It is folly to pay 
less than a living wage, for it keeps body and mind 
below par, incapable of maximum service. If a min- 
ister is worrying over money matters and hampered by 
family cares and actual hardships, how can he preach 
vital, inspiring sermons or radiate strength and hope- 
fulness in his parish work ? Sometimes a minister, on 
the point of leaving a pastorate because he must have 
a larger income for his growing family, is kept a year 
longer by a salary increase of $100. It makes it possi- 
ble for him to stay and to accomplish results that no 
other man could accomplish. In this way he reaps the 
results of his own faithful sowing, so that his third 
year is more effective than the previous two. Larger 
salaries make possible longer pastorates and far greater 
efficiency. More fundamental still is the undoubted 



iS 4 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

fact that success must be deserved, and appreciation is 
the reward of real service. When the country church 
becomes more definitely and concretely a community- 
serving church, it is more appreciated, and the farmers 
pay for what they believe in. The Mid-fashioned dis- 
trict school is bankrupt, because it does not deserve 
much appreciation or support. The new country 
school, which really educates the children for rural life, 
is winning more liberal support because it is appre- 
ciated. It is surely true that a useful church does 
not die. and the more it helps the community the more 
easily the money is raised for its maintenance. We 
need more demonstration churches, centers of com- 
munity service and usefulness, to prove that our prob- 
lem is usually solved when the church and the minister 
make themselves indispensable to the community. 

Questions of Business Method 

It seems to be true very generally that much need- 
less financial weakness of rural churches is due to poor 
business methods. Just as church federations in our 
cities are helping to standardize the business methods 
of the city churches, it ought to be possible without 
serious difficulty to educate financial boards of the 
country churches in approved methods of church 
financing. Many country churches are already as sys- 
tematically financed as any in the city; but in general 
the weaker the church the more hopeless the system. 
The " short-haul on the pocketbook " is the customary 
policy, usually by way of the subscription paper. The 
annual budget system, the every member canvas, some 



FINANCING THE COUNTRY CHURCH 185 

regular and adequate system of income, such as con- 
tinuous or annual pledges, with definite and regular 
payments, a simple system of accounting, regular audit- 
ing, and public reports, will go far toward toning up 
not only the finances but also the spiritual life of the 
church, as the two are so vitally connected. The 
science and art of church financing is something which 
can and should be taught. Many churches do not 
seem able to discover it without help. A traveling 
auditor or financial expert representing the state office 
of the denomination could render great assistance. 
This service is being done quite generally already by 
district superintendents and state officials in some de- 
nominations; but regular auditing or anything savor- 
ing of outside supervision would be delicate business 
in many of our independent churches. 

More Vital Rural Religion 

In all this consideration of ways and means the 
primary fact will not be lost sight of, that the funda- 
mental difficulty is not one of method but of life itself. 
The country church needs its religion vitalized and 
made more unselfish. The great motives underneath 
the life of the church and its activities must be taught 
and emphasized. The whole level of this subject of 
church finances must be raised. It must be rescued 
from its sordidness and selfishness and be spiritualized. 
The doctrine of Christian trusteeship must be accepted 
by Christian people. Not merely self-denial but the 
joy of sacrifice should be the key-note. People should 
be reminded that money given for the support of a 



1 86 THE CHURCH AXD COUNTRY LIFE 

real community-serving church is never chanty, but 
simply investment, for the benefit of the giver himself 
and his awn community. Money given for a useless 
or unnecessary church is neither investment nor charity 
but money thrown away. There is no use denying 
the fact that thousands of country churches are quite 
unnecessary, because the community was amply pro- 
vided with churches before these churches ever came. 
Money for such institutions is either a dead waste or 
an unju>titiable luxury. Yet vast sums are being 
wasted in supporting such needless enterprises. Rural 
business men have a right to refuse to support such 
churches and to focus their support on such churches 
as are actually efficient in community service. 

In a representative assembly like this, holding such 
diverse views on church polity, it would be remarkable 
if any report on financial policy could be wholly satis- 
factory. We cannot help feeling, however, that the 
problem is such a serious one, involving so deeply the 
welfare of the country churches everywhere, that it 
would be a great gain if this body with its far- 
reaching pow r er of moral suasion could go on record 
as advocating a strong financial policy for increased 
church efficiency. 

Your Committee, therefore, in the light of the fore- 
going discussion, beg leave to offer the following 
suggestions, as 

A Financial Policy for the Country Church 

i. The welfare of every country community de- 
mands a prosperous and efficient church at the heart 



FINANCING THE COUNTRY CHURCH 187 

of the community life. It deserves support in propor- 
tion to its usefulness. Such support is not charity, but 
investment in the community's welfare. 

2. If the church is needed in the community, a 
worthy church building should be provided, suitable 
for purposes of worship and religious education, and 
equipped with social rooms which can be made broadly 
useful to the community, as a center of joyous social 
life for young and old. A one-room church is usually 
a poor enterprise. 

3. The church or its board of trustees should be 
legally incorporated. For trustees or financial com- 
mittee only men of integrity, tested business ability, 
and willingness to work should be selected. Upon 
their skill and faithfulness the prosperity of the church 
will largely depend. They should take pride in its 
success and should determine to make it " a going 
concern." 

4. A selfish church is a failure and a cheap church 
never pays, If religion is worth having, it is worth 
paying for, and on a generous basis. For the sake 
of saving the boys and girls and giving the young 
people a wholesome social life and making the com- 
munity a safe place for a home, the church is worth 
while. For Christ's sake and the sake of humanity 
the church stands and serves, with faith in God and 
immortality. It should be made worthy of the loy- 
alty and whole-hearted support of the country people, 
on a self-respecting basis. 

5. A better paid ministry makes for efficiency. It 
is easier for most churches to raise $1,200 for a man 



1 88 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

who really earns it than to pay $700 to an inferior 
man; and that difference in salary makes possible a 
better educated pastor, a longer pastorate, with more 
permanent results. A live minister deserves a living 
salary. It should at least give him as adequate a 
living for his family as the average cultured home in 
the d immunity enjoys. 

6. ( >ne local pastor living with his people is worth 
more to the community than three preachers whose 
homes arc elsewhere. The community needs preach- 
ing, but it must have life-sharing. It can afford to 
sacrifice much to unite its Christian forces and main- 
tain one strong church with a well-paid pastor, paying 
for the whole time of a live man who shall be a com- 
munity leader, not a visitor. 

7. Country churches should adopt a businesslike 
system of finance. An annual budget should be care- 
fully prepared in advance and an " every member can- 
vass " be made to meet it. The pledge system with 
weekly or monthly payments furnishes a regular basis 
for church support which is steadier and usually more 
generous than the subscription paper. Paid suppers 
and entertainments for revenue, though valuable in 
moderation and for social purposes, are poor de- 
pendence for church support. Direct giving is always 
the cheapest policy. 

8. To keep church finances steadily efficient pub- 
licity is desirable, with regular quarterly reports to the 
people, and annual reports to the presbytery or district 
association. Regular auditing, quarterly or annually, 
by church authorities at state headquarters, furnishes 



FINANCING THE COUNTRY CHURCH 189 

a wholesome incentive and helps the local officials to 
keep abreast of the most recent methods of successful 
church work. 

9. The spiritual welfare of a church is closely re- 
lated to its financial self-respect, and its vital religion 
will grow with its generosity. Even the weaker 
churches should have some share in the world-wide 
work of missions and should strive to meet their ap- 
portionment, adopting it definitely as a part of their 
regular budget. 

10. If the resources of the community warrant it, 
every church should speedily grow to self-support. If 
the help of a home mission board is continuously 
necessary, it may suggest that the church itself is not 
needed in a community that will not support it. Per- 
haps for the glory of God and the welfare of the com- 
munity it should unite with a neighboring church. In 
case of actual poverty in the community the problem 
of developing local resources should be vigorously 
studied, as the basis of future prosperity and com- 
munity self-respect. 

Continuation Work Suggested 

Your Committee feel that they have been able to do 
little more than study the causes of financial weakness 
in the country churches and discuss business aims and 
standards of efficiency. There is much continuation 
work which should be done. We would suggest that 
the following lines of investigation be pursued the 
coming year : 

I. To gather further data as to the possibilities of 



190 



THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 



a life service for fully trained men in the country min- 
istry with the idea that such a ministry may be made 
a specialized field of Christian leadership with adequate 
support for a growing family. 

2. To study the cost of living in different rural 
sections of the country for the purpose of determining 
the actual living salary required for an average family 
of five. 

3. To correspond with church extension boards and 
home missionary societies of various denominations, to 
discover their basis of assisting rural churches, their 
policy of cooperation with other boards, and the basis 
on which their aid is withheld; also to gather data 
concerning the effect of this home mission policy upon 
the rural communities involved. 

4. To discover to what extent denominations and 
home mission boards have already standardized rural 
ministers' salaries and on what basis; also to find out 
what efficiency tests are exacted of ministers to justify 
the guaranty of the living salary. 

5. To collect and standardize the financial sugges- 
tions of the rural church commissions of the various 
denominations and to report the most successful plans 
of country church financing. 



COUNTRY CHURCH IN THE SOUTH 191 

THE COUNTRY CHURCH IN THE SOUTH 
W. H. Mills 

It is a message of good cheer that I bring to this 
Conference from the far South. 

The country church in the South has suffered as else- 
where from the exodus to the town and city. It 
suffers to-day all the evils of absentee landlordism 
and one year tenantry in most aggravated form. It 
is " troubled and perplexed on every side," but it is 
''not in despair"; it is "cast down, but not de- 
stroyed." 

The country church in the South begins to realize 
that new conditions demand new methods. It is en- 
deavoring to prove all things that it may hold fast 
that which is good. 

The oldest theological seminary in the South At- 
lantic States is the Presbyterian Theological Seminary 
at Columbia, South Carolina. It may properly be 
regarded as ultra-conservative in many respects, yet it 
has introduced courses in sociology. Its students have 
already been addressed this year by the State Com- 
missioner of Agriculture. A series of lectures are 
planned on such subjects as " The View-point of the 
Illiterate White Man," and I myself have been invited 
to give five lectures there on " The Country Church," 
early next year. Ten years ago such courses and 
lectures were quite impossible at this seminary. 

The Atlantic Theological Seminary * has also given 

1 Of the Congregational Church. 



192 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

me the privilege of addressing its students on the same 
subject at a conference to be held there in the same 
month. I believe it may be truly said that every the- 
ological seminary in the South is responding to the 
feeling abroad in the whole church, which demands 
investigatii >n into the underlying causes of present con- 
ditions, and which culminates in just such conferences 
as this, but upon a smaller scale. 

The agricultural colleges and state universities are 
also feeling and answering this demand. Clemson 
Agricultural College, the State Agricultural and Me- 
chanical College of South Carolina, was the first, so 
far as I know, in the South to enter actively and sys- 
tematically upon the assistance of the country church 
by every means in its power. It held a conference on 
the country church some years ago, to which it invited 
all the ministers living in the adjacent counties, and 
entertained them free of all expense. Last summer, 
in connection with its summer school, it arranged a 
ten days' course for country ministers, and obtained 
from the State Bankers' Association the promise to 
pay the railroad fare of all rural ministers who should 
attend. It may not be amiss to say just here that this 
course was successful beyond our expectations. The 
ministers who came went home saying that they had 
been greatly profited, that they would try to return for 
the next summer school, and that they would be 
" boosters " for it during the whole year. 

Clemson College has a mailing list of all the min- 
isters in the state. It has sent to them letters begging 
their assistance in the form of prayers at farmers' 



COUNTRY CHURCH IN THE SOUTH 193 

institutes, and asking them to further the planting of 
grain in the fall, and to aid in the diversifying of 
crops. Thus the college has suggested to every min- 
ister the wisdom and propriety of his taking an active 
part in all that makes for the agricultural development 
of his community. 

The college is now considering the possibility of 
adding a minister to its Extension Division, to have 
charge of its country church work, to do just such 
work for South Carolina as Messrs. Gill and Pinchot 
have performed for New York and Vermont. Just as 
the thoughtful farmer turns more and more to the 
agricultural college, so the country minister is begin- 
ning to find that the agricultural college can help him, 
and indeed is anxious to make him more efficient. 
The greatest ally of the country minister is the state 
agricultural college, and here and there our ministers 
are beginning to appreciate its ready and tremendous 
assistance. 

The church organizations are waking up to the new 
demands. The General Assembly of the Southern 
Presbyterian Church has officially declared that the 
Assembly of 19 16 shall be known as the " Country 
Church Assembly," and has appointed a committee to 
prepare a suitable program. Piedmont Presbytery in 
South Carolina a year ago took similar action. An- 
derson District Conference of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church has committed itself to a like course; 
and here and there a church has carried out the plan. 
Augusta Presbytery in Georgia took like action with 
respect to immigration. 



194 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

I am free to say that just now I am concerned, not 
so much with the practical results of these steps as 
with the spirit in which they were conceived. I re- 
joice heartily in this new spirit. I think it is the spirit 
of Christ; and from such a spirit results are sure 
which will make the South more and more a part of 
the kingd on of G >d. 

The local churches in all the denominations are en- 
deavoring more than ever before to be community 
servant-. I assure my hearers that the church in the 
South is not behind the times. Of course there are 
many churches — perhaps still a large majority — that 
would have all things continue as they were in the old 
days, when the fathers fell asleep. But the leaven of 
the new spirit of community service is at work. God 
grant that it may spread until the whole church shall 
be leavened. 

Let me give a few illustrations. Carmel Church, in 
Pickens County, is the oldest Presbyterian Church in 
upper South Carolina. It had suffered the loss of all 
things, almost, except its building and its cemetery. 
This year it is taking on new life — because it has 
sought to advance both the social and the agricultural 
development of the people by the cultivation of a 
church farm. The largest Presbyterian Church in the 
country in South Carolina is Bethel, and here a few 
years ago was organized an Improvement Association, 
whose members agreed to invite new people into their 
community and sell them good land on reasonable 
terms. 

Steel Creek Church, near Charlotte, North Carolina, 



COUNTRY CHURCH IN THE SOUTH 195 

is the largest country church in the Southern General 
Assembly. It has maintained itself and grown largely 
because of the fact that when a young man of that 
community wants to get a home, it has been for years 
the custom of the officers of that church to help him 
to acquire it. The pull of the town can be overcome 
when church officers stand ready to back worthy 
young men in their efforts toward home-ownership, 
not simply on business principles but for the sake of 
both the man and the church. 

I must hasten on to tell of the efforts ministers are 
making to be, in a new sense, the servants of all. I 
know a minister of the Congregational Church who 
has had in his churches in northern Georgia a series 
of church and country life institutes; another in South 
Carolina planned a picnic for the whole community on 
the church grounds, and the speakers came from the 
agricultural college. I helped, in August, 191 5, in a 
meeting of this sort. In the morning at eleven there 
was preaching, after which dinner was served on the 
grounds. In the afternoon one day we had a dairy 
demonstration ; on the next afternoon we had a poultry 
demonstration; and on the third afternoon an orchard 
demonstration, with the introduction of the country 
farm demonstration agent to the people of the com- 
munity. On two nights we had lectures with lantern 
slides on community building. We held all the meet- 
ings in the church itself, and I have met no one who 
thought that we ran the risk of committing sacrilege. 

This is the new idea that is seizing the mind of the 
church in the South, — that the local church has the 



iy6 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

right to live only as it spends its life in community 
service. Some of us in the South believe that, if a 
church in the country does not serve its whole com- 
munity by making hotter fanners as well as making 
the farmer- Letter, it ought to die. We believe the 
church has a very definite word to speak on the tenant 
system and landlordism, as well as on prohibition and 
" worldly amusements." We have come to believe 
that the second great commandment needs to be so 
put into practice by the church that rich man and poor 
man, white man and black man, shall each have equal 
opportunity to work and live safely under his own 
vine and fig-tree. 

Finally, I beg to assure you that " away down 
South in Dixie " we have no new gospel. Our preach- 
ing is still the preaching of the cross, our appeal is still 
to the individual man to believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ and be saved, both himself and his house. But 
we do ask with intensest desire that along with this 
evangelistic appeal the church shall seek the physical 
and mental and spiritual welfare of the whole com- 
munity, that it may present it in soundness and whole- 
ness before the throne of God. So only shall the 
church be animated by the spirit of the Master who 
came " not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and 
to give his life a ransom for many." 



SOCIAL JUSTICE IN RURAL COMMUNITY 197 

SOCIAL JUSTICE IN THE RURAL 
COMMUNITY 

Harry F. Ward 

I am afraid that I cannot follow the last speaker 
with an equally glowing account of rural church prog- 
ress in this section. I know of a country church not 
fifty miles from here where the preacher put in a 
course of lectures by experts on better farming. On 
the first night he found that the sexton had left the 
church locked and dark, and he was forced to break 
a window to get in. On the second night of the course 
the sexton met him at the door and threw the keys in 
his face, telling him that if the church was to go to 
the devil by discussing such subjects he would have no 
part in the iniquity. 

It is my misfortune that I have been prevented by 
other duties from attending all the sessions of this 
Conference, but it is apparent even to a casual ob- 
server that this Conference is committed to the propo- 
sition that the church can only find itself through its 
ministry to the life of the community. Theological 
seminaries used to teach that the church was a place 
where the gospel was preached and the sacraments 
administered. In many rural communities it is still 
considered solely as a place of worship. Sometimes 
even that is not an ideal. A year or two ago I met 
a young preacher who had gone to a rural church just 
after its congregation had adopted plans for a new 
building. He found inadequate provision for the 



198 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

Sunday-school, the primary room being in the darkest, 
dampest corner of the basement. He urged a change 
of plans and was t ild, " Young man, in our old church 
we could never conduct a funeral properly; there was 
no room to turn the casket around and we always had 
to back it out Now we have got a plan that lets us 
take the casket out properly, and we are not going to 
change it for anything or anybody." So they built 
the church for the dead and let the living go. 

The term social justice is a vague and mouth-filling 
term. It needs just now to be made concrete. The 
preaching of the God of righteousness has developed 
a certain amount of justice between individuals. It 
must now develop justice between the various groups 
that compose the community life; between producers, 
middlemen, and consumers; between the groups 
engaged in agriculture, manufacturing, commerce, 
transportation, mining, and personal service in the pro- 
fessions. There must be no handicaps of special privi- 
lege for one group involving disabilities for another. 
When the prophets found the growing merchant class 
in Israel encroaching upon the men of the countryside, 
they thundered the wrath of God against them. They 
might pile high their gifts upon the altar, but Je- 
hovah's word was " Though you make many prayers, 
I will not hear you. Though you stretch forth your 
hands all the day long, I will turn away mine eyes 
from you." Why ? Because the price of the very gifts 
upon the altar was the depleted lives of the men of the 
soil whose little landholdings had been taken away 
under cover of the law, — duly signed, sealed, and sane- 



SOCIAL JUSTICE IN RURAL COMMUNITY 190 

tioned, but nevertheless against the righteousness of 
Jehovah, — to swell the great estates of the rich mer- 
chants. While this continued, God did not desire 
temple worship; what he wanted was that justice 
should flow through the land as a mighty stream and 
fall down as water. In the same spirit did Jesus con- 
front the monopolists of the temple courts. To his 
flaming words he added the strength of his good right 
arm, denying those who secured special privilege to 
tax the religious necessities of the common people 
any place or part in the house of God. So to-day 
must the preachers of the gospel thunder against any 
group in the community which seeks or secures the 
privilege to profit at the expense of other groups or 
of the whole community. 

Social justice is perhaps easiest understood in con- 
nection with child life. Whatever else it may mean 
it can mean no less than this — that all children must 
have equal access to the things necessary for their 
development. If one group of children have a better 
chance than another for health, education, moral pro- 
tection, and religious development, this is fundamental 
social injustice. Social justice demands that the chil- 
dren of one group in the population shall have as good 
a chance as the children of another to develop the life 
more abundant that is the Christian ideal. A Persian 
proverb declares that when an injured child cries in 
the dark the throne of God rocks from side to side. 
If any state lets that cry go unheard and unanswered, 
the government of that state will soon begin to shake 
to its foundations. 



200 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

The weight of social injustice that presses upon the 
children of a certain section of the industrial wage- 
earners is easy to be felt. The bitter cry of these chil- 
dren has been coming up from below until it has 

reached the ear of the church. These children live in 
bad air, amid poor surroundings; they are under- 
nourished and compelled to leave school when half 
educated. Upon their enfeebled lives the organized 
vices of the city mass their attack. It is obvious that 
social justice demands that this group of children be 
emancipated. The same need exists for a smaller 
group of children in rural communities. There child 
life is not so much destroyed by frontal attacks as it is 
wasted through lack of development. In the country- 
side there are often undernourishment and unsanitary 
conditions, improper child labor, and the denial of 
education and recreation. The fact that in the country 
these conditions are more largely due than in the city 
to the ignorance and greed of parents does not lessen 
the social injustice from which the children suffer. 
The program of social welfare which seeks to give 
equal opportunity to all child life must be carried into 
the rural districts. 

Present tendencies in rural America are rapidly 
increasing the pressure of economic conditions upon 
a section of its child life. Two new groups are grow- 
ing in the rural population of this country — landlords 
and tenants. So rapidly do they grow that some 
students insist that we are heading straight toward 
the farming of large tracts of land intensively by con- 
centrated capital, with hired men doing the work. 



SOCIAL JUSTICE IN RURAL COMMUNITY 201 

Passing through Iowa the other day, I picked up a 
paper and found a statement by an agricultural au- 
thority estimating that one half the population of 
Iowa was composed of either tenant farmers or hired 
men. The children of the tenant farmers have not 
an equal chance for development with those of the 
landlords. Even where their educational privileges 
are the same, they are not as well able to take advan- 
tage of them. I was recently in a rural community 
where the retired farmers were objecting strenuously 
to paying the tax required to make the rural school 
efficient, a school which was to serve, not their chil- 
dren, but the children of their tenants and hired men. 
One man even proposed that this latter group should 
not be permitted to vote on school questions. 

The continuance of the handicap upon the develop- 
ment of child life involved in the increase of tenant 
and wage farming means that the rural communities 
will cease to supply men of strength to the national 
life. It is the free men of the soil who have always 
fought for progress. They largely secured the lib- 
erties of England. They were the men who drove 
their wagons for two or three days to hear Lincoln 
and Douglas debate slavery. They were the men who 
saw the war through to the end. When you take 
out of the national life the free men of the soil, you 
have taken out the most of its backbone. 

It is not likely, however, that in the atmosphere of 
democracy in this land we shall develop a subservient, 
pauperized peasant group such as exists in England, 
offering a background for My Lady Bountiful of the 



202 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

manor hall. What is more likely to develop is a re- 
bellious group of agricultural workers and the growth 
of class hatred in the rural sections even as it now 
exists in some quarters in industry. With the Indus- 
trial Workers of the World organizing the seasonal 
agricultural workers, and farm owners becoming ab- 
sentee capitalists, it looks as though the conflict that 
is developing in this country between those who re- 
ceive income merely from ownership of property and 
those who receive it from service rendered would 
gather strength in the rural districts. Already in some 
agricultural regions the attitude of the farmer in the 
conflict between property income and service income, 
his attitude toward the seasonal workers that aid in 
gathering the harvest, is that unsympathetic and in- 
human attitude which is held by some captains of in- 
dustry. Some recent brutal incidents in the labor con- 
flict have occurred in rural sections. The increase of 
class hatred and strife in rural America is inevitable 
unless religion can stem the tide by securing social 
justice. 

Social injustice roots in economic inequality, and 
the beginnings of economic inequality are in unequal 
opportunity for the ownership of the land. The ques- 
tion of social justice in the rural community is the 
land question, which is older than civilization. Our 
religion never dodged it. From the day of the Hebrew 
lawgivers it has developed a body of teaching designed 
to secure justice in land ownership and use. The 
fundamental task for religion to-day in the rural com- 
munity is to develop a body of teaching adapted to 



SOCIAL JUSTICE IN RURAL COMMUNITY 203 

the present situation. If it fails here no program of 
social welfare can be carried through. The basis of 
religious teaching on this question must be the old 
Hebrew word that " the earth is the Lord's " (not the 
landlord's). The corollary of this is that it is to be 
used for the good of all the people, that it is a com- 
munity inheritance in which all the people of the com- 
munity have a share. Another corollary is that the 
title to individual control and use of the land must 
rest only on the basis of service rendered to the com- 
munity. If it can develop a body of religious teach- 
ing on the land question, the country church will be- 
come not a local but a world-wide force. It will reach 
out and touch the whole issue of the relation of the 
people to the natural resources upon which all industry 
depends. It will reach out still further and touch the 
whole world life. For the possibility of ordering the 
life of the world in security and in peace depends upon 
the recognition of the fact that in the economy of God 
there are no superior races or nations even as there 
are no superior classes; upon the willingness to work 
out a world-wide plan of social justice based upon the 
rights of all the children of men the world over to 
the earth and its resources as the common inheritance. 



204 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

THE CRISIS OF ORGANIZED CHRISTIANITY 
Fred B. Smith 

That man must be dull indeed who fails to observe 
the peril which confronts the organized forces of the 
Christian religion in this generation. So acute has this 
become that many of the ablest students of religion 
arc prophesying the utter collapse of the present order 
unless Si me very prompt readjustments are made in 
the present system. This is not an indictment of 
Christianity as a truth or doctrine. The precepts of 
Jesus Christ were never so radiant with supreme ef- 
fectiveness and practicability as now. Jew and Gen- 
tile, Occidental and Oriental, are alike turning to the 
unequaled Beatitudes as the only hope for the present 
world chaos. But where is there an organization equal 
to the hour in the adequate application of these ideals ? 
is the paramount question. There has never been such 
a solemn hour in the world's history as the present one. 
Can the human family survive in concord under the 
strain of modern methods, which have eliminated time 
and space and brought into striking reach the frictions 
of classes, races, and nations that two decades ago were 
remote enough to make momentary outbreaks impossi- 
ble ? is the question uppermost in the minds of thinking 
men. 

A world reduced to a neighborhood demands a 
common religion, and a common religion it is to have 
very rapidly. If Christianity is to be the faith, its 
leaders have no time to lose in meeting one funda- 



CRISIS OF ORGANIZED CHRISTIANITY 205 

mental requirement, namely, to present a United Chris- 
tian Organization. We have to learn at once to move 
the Christian forces of the world as a compact unit 
upon the new tasks or be content to accept defeat at 
the end of the road. Segregated sectarianism will 
not win the Christian conquest of the twentieth cen- 
tury. Every modern problem before the church de- 
mands unity in effort. 

The present war, worse than all the other com- 
bined wars of the world's history, is a fruit of divided 
Christianity. There was in the world Christian senti- 
ment enough, if it had had a method which could 
have brought its full impact to bear upon the con- 
tending nations, absolutely to prevent this outbreak; 
and if the old order is to be continued, the same up- 
heaval will occur again, earlier or later. Not poli- 
ticians, nor kings, emperors, or other rulers, but a 
united voice of the believers in the gospel of Jesus 
Christ will some day fix the standards of world's 
peace, and this alone is sufficient to demand a united 
church. The extension of the gospel to the non- 
Christian world has been piteously slow in the past, 
but will be more hideously retarded in the future 
unless a united Christianity is called into action. 

Every world issue is crying for combined effort in 
the name of Jesus Christ. Not less insistent are the 
demands within our own shores. The refreshing 
streams of our life — economic, social, political, and 
moral — have from times immemorial flowed from the 
countryside and the open field. The church ought to 
be strongest in the rural places where the genesis of 



206 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

things is to be found. It is proverbially and horribly 
weakest there. 

The cold denominational attempt at this problem 
has proved a flat, ridiculous failure. The hope of any 
kind of success in solving it may be grounded only 
in a united Christianity. 

The task of proper, forceful, continuous religious 
education is left undone up to this date. We have 
been depending upon a thirty-minute period per week 
in the Sunday-school for a few children, a smatter- 
ing in the home for a yet smaller company, the pulpit 
for another group, and an annual spell of hysterical 
revival for the least number, as means for teaching 
the truths of God. For the mass they have failed. 
The universities of every kind, the public and private 
schools alike, are awake and open-minded to this need. 
A united Christianity can enter this door and meet 
the need. " Fifty-seven different varieties " will be 
repudiated. 

The civic problems, the law enforcement issue, the 
child life program, and, indeed, every vital, burning, 
compelling call to Christianity are of such a nature 
that the hope of their successful handling is vain 
unless there is grace and genius enough in the church 
to evolve a plan by which the forces can move as a unit 
with an eye single only to the kingdom of God. 



CHURCH FEDERATION AND COOPERATION 207 

CHURCH FEDERATION AND 
COOPERATION 

{Report of Committee) 

E. Tallmadge Root, Chairman, Henry A. Atkin- 
son, Lemuel Call Barnes, Anna B. Taft, George 
Frederick Wells. 

Analysis 
Federation includes: 

I. Federation of all Betterment Agencies. 
II. Church Federation, embracing 

1. Federation of Churches. 

2. Federated Circuits. 

3. Community Churches. 

(1) Federated Churches. 

(2) Denominational Churches. 

(3) Union Independent Churches. 

1. Cooperation is a general term, and federation is 
used in so many senses that our first step must be to 
distinguish and define. 

2. Federation is used in a broad sense, including 
all institutions, civil or voluntary, interested in rural 
betterment; for example, The New England Federa- 
tion for Rural Progress, and similar organizations in 
states, counties, or townships. In these, the churches 
may and should have a part, by direct representation 
in townships and through their own Federations in the 
larger territories. There is a gratifying recognition, 
on the part of betterment movements, of the fact that 
all social problems are, in ultimate analysis, moral, 



208 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

and therefore insoluble without the aid of the institu- 
tions of religion, which alone can bring adequate mo- 
tives. This gives the church to-day an opportunity 
unsurpassed in history. With the proper attitude, as 
R. Fulton Cutting has shown in his Church and So- 
ciety, they may even cooperate with, and use, the 
'* institutions of the democratic state." 

3. " Federation," again, is applied to organizations 
composed of churches only. The term " Church Fed- 
eration " should be strictly limited to organizations in 
which churches, or their denominational conferences, 
are represented by official action: no body of indi- 
viduals or non-ecclesiastical societies should receive the 
title. Following the analogy of our Federal Govern- 
ment, Church Federation attempts to combine the max- 
imum unity of action with the complete independence 
of the constituent bodies, denominational or local. It 
implies no endorsement of others' doctrine, policy, or 
ritual, and no compromise of one's own. Relying on 
practical motives, it seeks a pragmatic unity. It thus 
meets the obvious necessity that in every community, 
commonwealth, and nation, the churches shall, to the 
maximum extent possible, act unitedly in the face of 
the pressing religious and social tasks. There is no 
place where such united action is more needed and 
promising than in the rural township. 

4. But here again, various types and methods 
must be distinguished. The end, — combined action 
of all Christians, — may and must be attained in 
varying ways according to the conditions of the com- 
munity. 



CHURCH FEDERATION AND COOPERATION 209 

5. In a township where the population requires, 
and financial resources can support, more than one 
church and pastor, that end is to be secured by a local 
Federation of Churches; that is, a joint committee of 
pastors and delegates, officially appointed by the sev- 
eral churches, to learn and meet all needs, religious 
or social, which require cooperation or concerted 
action. The simpler problems and closer acquaintance 
of its churches give the rural township advantage over 
the city, and experience has already proved that, in 
proportion to expenditure of time and money, town- 
ship federations accomplish the largest results of any. 
Every rural town with more than one church ought to 
have such an organization. 

6. In a township where population and resources 
are inadequate to support more than one pastor, but 
where the population is so distributed that more than 
one place of worship and organized church is neces- 
sary, such a joint committee should be organized and 
a common pastor employed. This may be called a 
Federated Circuit. Similar circuits are common in 
some denominations. Interdenominational circuits 
have been arranged in some states. But wherever 
possible, they should follow civil boundaries so as to 
secure the obvious advantage of a resident township 
pastor. (In all types, it will be noted, we assume that 
organizations shall strictly follow civil divisions. ) 

7. What population justifies fully-equipped sep- 
arate churches? Here the standard obviously needs 
to be raised. The limit set by one state federation, 
three hundred and thirty-three to a church, is obviously 



210 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

too low. With all the growing demands of missions 
and social service, the churches are not justified in 
asking a trained man to devote his life to less than 
one thousand souls, except where the population of 
an entire township is less; or to live on a salary of less 
than $1,000 anywhere. 

8. In communities whose compactness permits, and 
wh( >se population and resources require, that there be 
only one congregation and pastor, but where several 
churches actually exist and are not ready to unite as 
one denominational church, a Federated Church may 
and should be formed. Like a Federation, this type 
preserves intact the legal existence and denomina- 
tional connection of the churches, while securing 
united action through a joint committee. It differs 
from the Federation in that this united action includes, 
as its first and main object, worship as one congrega- 
tion and the support of one pastor. Complex as a 
Federated Church seems, experience demonstrates that 
it works harmoniously and secures marked increase of 
efficiency over the field. It may prepare for full union 
as a church of one or the other denomination ; but it 
may also be a permanent solution. The limitations of 
trust funds often make it the only solution. Denomina- 
tions which differ widely in forms of worship, while 
they heartily cooperate in a Federation of Churches, 
may not be able to unite in a Federated Church. 

9. As implied in the last paragraph, where a new 
church is being formed, or where existing churches 
can agree to unite organically, one church may and 
should be formed. This is obviously the simplest and 



CHURCH FEDERATION AND COOPERATION 211 

the best solution. Such a community church may 
either be denominational or undenominational. If it 
is possible to agree upon a denomination, the former 
is undoubtedly the better, as giving the church the 
missionary outlet counsel, and perhaps aid which it 
requires. Denominations are the most effective 
agencies yet existing to advance the kingdom of God. 
Success depends upon such an understanding between 
the denominations of the state that the one holding 
the field shall make it an acceptable church-home to 
every one who is a true Christian, and other denomina- 
tions shall advise their adherents there to identify 
themselves with it at least as "associate members"; 
that is, members retaining ecclesiastical connection 
elsewhere. 

10. The union or undenominational church is neces- 
sarily independent. It suffers from lack of denom- 
inational aid and counsel. It may, however, readily 
share in missions through denominational or interde- 
nominational boards; and secure fellowship, counsel, 
and perhaps even aid ultimately, through the state 
Federation of Churches. Even with their present iso- 
lation many union churches are successful, as appears 
from the fact that from 1890 to 1906 independent 
churches which include union churches, increased in 
the United States five hundred and ninety-six per cent., 
while the number of Protestant Churches as a whole 
increased only twenty-seven per cent. 

11. Of course the single church of either type is 
not an example of Federation in the technical sense; 
but its success evidently requires the spirit of inter- 



212 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

denominational cooperation; and therefore comes 
within the topic assigned to your committee. 

M [NORITY Report 

The Rev. George Frederick Wells dissents from 
paragraph 8, saying: "A one-minister federation 
(Federated Church) is justifiable only when some 
form of organic union has become the settled purpose 
of the federation and the minister is secured expressly 
to help attain that end." 

He would change paragraph 7 into " a guarded 
statement of the great importance of the question of 
numerical size of parish," and holds that paragraph 10 
leans too much to the side of the independent church. 



COOPERATION AND RELIGIOUS 
EDUCATION 

//'. G. Clippinger 

It may not be amiss for me at the outset to state 
frankly and yet with the fullest sympathy a fear which 
I entertain with regard to the emphasis of meetings 
such as this. We have shared very enthusiastically 
the new spirit of awakened interest in social service, 
and the call of the country is so strong and loud that 
its appeals have stirred our hearts with a great deal 
of enthusiasm. This meeting is significant for its de- 
gree of interest in the federation of churches and par- 



COOPERATION AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 213 

ticularly in the interest in country life. The inspira- 
tion is running high, and what I am about to say must 
not be interpreted as being a criticism from one who 
is outside the circle of friends of the movement. I 
share with you heartily in the enthusiasm of the hour, 
but at the same time I claim the right to be a friendly 
critic and reserve the privilege of pointing out some 
of the possible dangers of an overemphasis upon one 
phase of the problem, or rather non-emphasis of an- 
other and vital phase of the problem. It is said that 
a man's worst enemies are they of his own household. 
I should like to say that a man's best friends are they 
of his own household, and further that a man's safest 
and sanest critics are they of his own household. 

In the matter of federation, as it pertains to both 
the city and the country problem, it seems to me that 
one important thing has been overlooked — that of the 
federation in things which are essentially religious in 
their bearings. This must not be interpreted as criti- 
cism of the splendid emphasis upon methods in social 
service and expressive activity. The one thing which 
this program and most of our programs have over- 
looked has been that of deliberation upon the special 
problem of religious education. It is to this problem 
that my topic commits us for consideration at this 
moment. 

That I may set before you more clearly what I mean 
I may be permitted to quote a text. It is a rather long 
one, but expresses better than I could my conception 
of our strength and our weakness. I refer to that 
part of Dr. Francis G. Peabody's address before the 



214 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

Religious Education Association some years ago, en- 
titled "The Social Conscience and the Religious 
Life." The following is my text: 

" Religious education, it may be said, deals with the 
child, the individual, the church; social duty deals with 
the community, the industrial order, the state. Re- 
ligious education leads to a better knowledge of God; 
social duty leads t<> a better service of man. 

" The two enterprises stand near together, but they 
face, as it were, opposite ways. Religious education 
looks toward the eternal; social duty looks toward the 
contemporary. It is not, then, a questionable use of 
our opportunity, not to say a perversion of our trust, 
if even for a single session an organization pledged to 
religious education should be invited to consider the 
perplexing problems of social duty, which so gravely 
divide and distract the thought of the modern world. 
The hesitatii in winch may be thus expressed concerning 
our immediate purpose reflects a much more general 
skepticism which many religious people frankly con- 
fess. The absorbing interest of the present age in 
social duty, its desire for social service, and its dream 
of social revolution have been, it is admitted, a sum- 
mons to the Christian church, as to the modern world, 
to new forms of duty; but have they not, it is asked, 
diverted the church from its original and permanent 
purpose of redeeming and sanctifying the individual 
soul ? Is not the church tempted to diminish its devo- 
tion to worship and to apply its energies to work ? Are 
we not substituting clubs, gymnasiums, and social set- 
tlements for prayers, conversions, and revivals? Is 



COOPERATION AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 215 

not the church in our day less frequented than the 
parish house, and the preacher drawn to a gospel of 
social reform rather than to a gospel of salvation? 
And where, if anywhere, shall we escape from this 
peril of secularized and truncated Christianity if not 
in an assembly expressly devoted to religious educa- 
tion ? Shall not the clamorous demands of social duty 
be, for the moment, hushed while the soul of man 
listens for the instruction of God? 

" Much there is, no doubt, in the temper of the 
present time which justifies in devout people this 
sense of apprehension. The awakening of the social 
conscience has been so abrupt and startling, and the 
reaction from an individualized and self -centered re- 
ligion so marked and compelling, that the church as 
a religious shrine may be easily supplanted by the 
church as a social laboratory; and the practice of the 
presence of God may be forgotten in the practice of the 
service of man. The tremendous force of the social 
renaissance sweeps Christian teachers into restate- 
ments of Christian doctrine which identify a social 
program with the essentials of a Christian faith. 

" Where, it may be asked, is the place for personal 
piety among these pressing demands of social service? 
Are the economists, sociologists, philanthropists, or 
revolutionists to represent all that is left of Christian 
faith? Is the Christian church to teach an industrial 
revolution instead of a spiritual evolution? Are we 
to be so busy in doing good that we have no time to 
be good? Is the old-time issue between faith and 
works to be revived, and must another Paul preach 



216 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

again the vanity of nnspiritualized conduct, and the 
power of the risen life? The situation is certainly not 
without gravity, when many circumstances of the time 
conspire to transform the Christian church into a 
charity-bureau, or a lecture-platform, or a recreation- 
ground, or a medical clinic.'' 

There are three existing agencies for religious in- 
struction in most communities, the Sunday-school, the 
Christian Endeavor Society, and the home. Of these 
the most important is the home, which is at the same 
time the most neglected. The most effective in its 
organization is the Sunday-school. There is no com- 
munity where it has not gone; no hamlet it has not 
reached. The hi >me, which is the primitive and natural 
agency for religious instruction, has surrendered its 
right to instruct in things religious to an artificial 
organization kn< >wn as the Sunday-school. Here under 
varying and often unfavorable conditions our children 
receive most of the religious inspiration and training 
they will get. 

The Christian Endeavor Society and other young 
people's organizations are designed more for training 
than for instruction and yet may have a share in giving 
and receiving the inspiration to be derived from co- 
operative and federated movements. 

The chief agency for religious education in the rural 
communities, then, is the Sunday-school. The Sunday- 
school has likewise been the most effective agency in 
producing federation and cooperation among the 
churches. Indeed an anomalous situation presents 
itself in this, that whole congregations will mingle in 



COOPERATION AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 217 

an interdenominational Sunday-school convention, sub- 
scribe to plans, purposes, ideals, and methods, and 
even to fundamental doctrines in religion, but refuse 
to come together on other occasions and in other cir- 
cumstances. At the same time it must be admitted 
that, much of the bigotry and narrowness of sectarian- 
ism is being dissipated through the organized Sunday- 
school work. The World's Sunday-School Association 
represents an organization of the leading Christian 
denominations in this and foreign lands. It has 
succeeded in pressing itself into pagan countries. Fre- 
quently the Sunday-school has been the pioneer in mis- 
sionary activity. The same spirit of comity and co- 
operation is prevalent in all communities in the home 
land. It is the finest democratizing and socializing 
agency known in religious circles. There is about it 
a freedom and an ease unknown in other organizations. 

The remarkable effect of the international uniform 
lesson system has been to unify the sentiment of a 
score or more of Christian denominations. The con- 
sciousness that at the same time, under the same con- 
ditions and by the same system twenty to thirty mil- 
lions of people are studying the same Biblical material 
in a uniform lesson is the finest illustration of coopera- 
tion and federation the world has yet seen. Al- 
though the graded system is supplanting the uniform 
system, the results and the spirit remain, and the re- 
ligious world will forever be the heir of this rich 
heritage of fraternal spirit. 

The Sunday-school has not only contributed to this 
spirit of federation and cooperation, but it is also 



218 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

receiving and sharing in the new spirit which the 
movement represented by this organization is produc- 
ing. The Sunday-school has given and received much 
of inspiration and is becoming the center of a new 
spirit of unselfish devotion to the cause of religion. 
It has become the most popular and socializing organ- 
ization. It is the easiest and cheapest medium through 
which cooperation and federation may be effected. 

At the same time it has failed to accomplish much 
that lies within its province, Its degree of federation 
has been secured chiefly through conventions, insti- 
tutes, and ci nferences. These have extended from the 
w rid'- i rganization down through the international, 
state, district, county, and township divisions. It has 
faikd, however, of projecting the spirit of federation 
int<» its practical operations for the benefit of its own 
work. It has created a spirit, but has not in full 
measure produced tangible results. To be specific, the 
same condition that is notorious with regard to the 
church as a whole affects particularly the Sunday- 
school operation. This is to be seen ( i ) in the ineffi- 
ciency of its teaching force when confined to denom- 
inational lines, and | 2) in the lack of efficient material 
equipment. 

The fact that so few efficiently trained teachers are 
available for the average rural Sunday-school has be- 
come a matter of great concern to the religious forces 
of the country. The classes, if pedagogically ar-. 
ranged, are necessarily small and the number of teach- 
ers relatively large. Moreover, by the very nature of 
the case, not many qualified teachers can be secured 



COOPERATION AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 219 

from numbers so small as the average rural congrega- 
tion. Much of the ignorance of Biblical facts, to say 
nothing of the failure to vitalize religious truth, is 
doubtless due to the inefficient methods of our instruc- 
tion. Trained leadership coupled with a universal and 
popular conviction that religious instruction is not only 
desirable but necessary for the welfare of the indi- 
vidual and of society will help to solve the problem. 

Now let me say a word with regard to the method 
of cooperation and federation in religious education. 
There are three distinct media of cooperation possible 
in rural districts : first, the community training school ; 
second, the federated Sunday-school; and third, the 
correlation of Sunday-school and day-school in relig- 
ious instruction. There might be also added a fourth 
— cooperation for religious instruction in the home, 
which of course would be more difficult of execution. 

In city communities a new movement is now being 
promoted for interdenominational community train- 
ing-schools in which are employed a half dozen ex- 
perts drawn from all denominations, sometimes im- 
ported from other communities, carrying on through 
a series of months a systematic course of instruction 
and training for both teachers and officers. In this day 
of quick transit by automobiles, of easy communica- 
tion by telephone, and of other socializing agencies, it 
is indeed possible for a community training-school 
including a half dozen parishes to be carried on in the 
winter as easily as the old-fashioned spelling-bee or 
debating society. Let the work in the Bible be con- 
ducted by the minister who is best trained to teach 



220 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

the Bible. Let the work in psychology be carried on 
by the best school-teacher or superintendent in the 
community. Let the topic of administration be taught 
by the best Sunday-school superintendent. Still fur- 
ther Specialization could be made if necessary. Illus- 
trate >ns ( 'f the splendid way in which this is done in the 
cities are shown in Oak Park, Chicago; Dayton; Cin- 
cinnati; Cleveland; and other cities. 

On the second point, the matter of equipment, it 
may be said that it is hardly fair to this generation 
of young people that centralized school-buildings with 
modern heating, lighting, and ventilating systems and 
comfortable seating should be provided for the day- 
schools, while the leaders of religious work are un- 
willing t<> provide similar conditions for the Sunday- 
school. This would probably call for centralization of 
religious education. It would require the laying down 
of denominational lines and the establishment of a 
new spirit of federation and cooperation of the 
churches. Nevertheless, the greatest advertisement 
the Christian religion could ever have would be the 
announcement of a centralized Sunday-school con- 
ducted by trained experts, with Sunday-school wagons 
to bring the children from neighboring districts in 
numbers sufficient to create enthusiasm and inspira- 
tion in the work of teaching. One reason that so few 
young people go to Sunday-school in the rural dis- 
tricts is that the numbers in the average church are 
not sufficient to awaken interest. The churches are 
cold and poorly lighted and ventilated. The music is 
dull and uninspiring. The numbers in his own group 



COOPERATION AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 221 

do not inspire and awaken social sympathy on the 
part of the pupil. The teacher feels that because the 
class is small there is little need of special preparation. 
The consequence is that the interest in religious educa- 
tion and, of course, in religion dies. 

One mark of the shortcomings of the Sunday-school 
in its present system is the limitation of time to be 
given to actual religious instruction. Usually one 
hour or one hour and a quarter at most is given each 
week to the Sunday-school program. This time is 
necessarily reduced, by the elimination of the periods 
given to the opening and closing exercises and to other 
necessary features of the program, to twenty or thirty 
minutes for actual instruction. In the average 
Sunday-school it is a question whether more than 
twenty minutes of positive instruction are given. Bar- 
ring the four Sundays in the year which are usually 
given to special programs, we have left forty-eight 
regular sessions. This would allow sixteen full hours 
per year for religious instruction in the Sunday-school. 
Add to this the fact that the average attendance in 
the Sunday-school is only about two thirds of the en- 
rolment, the further fact that the average teacher is 
not well prepared for religious instruction, and the 
still further fact that most scholars do not spend any 
time in preparation of their lesson at home, and you 
have a situation which demands serious attention on 
the part of people who are interested in religion and 
religious instruction. 

All of these features and more that might be named 
are not to be interpreted as a reflection upon the sys- 



THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

tem as much as a comment upon its limitations and a 
plea for a larger program, better training, better equip- 
ment, more time, greater reverence, and a more serious 
attitude toward the most vital thing in our church and 
educational activities. It calls for federation and co- 
operation in our activities, without which the largest 
results canrn >t be i Obtained. 

May it be that the Sunday-school in the inspiration 
of tlie movement for federation and cooperation will 
develi p in these new directions in the days soon to 
come. 

The latest and one of the most striking illustrations 
of cooperation in religious education is to be found in 
the correlation of the work of the public schools with 
that of the Sunday-schools. This is accomplished in 
three ways which may be designated as the Greeley 
(Colorado) plan, the Gary (Indiana) plan, and the 
X' nth Dakota plan. 

By the first plan a system of cooperation in the prep- 
aration of teachers is provided between the state 
normal school and the local city churches. It has been 
so satisfactory that it may be commended to any com- 
munity where training agencies for teachers in the 
public schools exist. 

In the Gary plan certain hours of the children com- 
ing to or going from school may be unclaimed by the 
public schools at given periods each week and the 
action of their parents may direct the children to the 
church, the parish house, or the synagogue to receive 
religious instruction by the preacher, the priest, or the 
rabbi. According to this plan, neither school property 



COOPERATION AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 223 

nor school employees are used for religious instruction, 
and neither Jew nor Christian, Catholic nor Protestant 
has ground for complaint. All of them are working 
in complete harmony with the spirit of the state to all 
the state furnishes equal opportunity. 

Another form of cooperation, which was inaugu- 
rated some years ago in North Dakota, has proved 
successful in that state and elsewhere. In this plan 
the high schools accept for credit a certain amount of 
work done in the Sunday-school or synagogue or 
by other church societies or agencies, if the work 
including material, method, and examinations, is 
approved by the school authorities. Here, again, 
high-grade religious instruction is obtained by all who 
desire it without the use of public funds or the en- 
croachment upon the principle of religious freedom. 
These all afford illustrations of cooperation in religious 
education. 

A word may be said concerning religious education 
in the home through cooperation. Is it not possible 
that parents' clubs or associations may be formed for 
the awakening of interest in home religion? Special 
addresses and lectures on children's religion, the family 
altar, and parental piety might be procured. Oppor- 
tunity for distributing religious literature, too, might 
be provided by this means. All of these things would 
tend indeed to a. finer religious life. 

These are a few of the ways in which some of the 
vital things of life as found in real religious study and 
inspiration may be procured through cooperation in re- 
ligious education. They need not supplant but cer- 



224 THE CHURCH AXD COUNTRY LIFE 

tainly can supplement the splendid work now done in 
practical and expressive lines of social service. 



COOPERATION AND FEDERATION 

John M. Moore 

Cooperation and federation are terms that compre- 
hend far-reaching and multiplied activities based upon 
high ideals and directed to noble ulterior ends. They 
arc not words to be used by men of little heart and 
selfish purpose. To apply the principles which they 
involve is to usher in a period of reconstruction of 
church life in methods of operation, in the alinement of 
forces, and in the recognition of the objects to be 
achieved. Reconstruction is never child's play, for 
aside from its positive labors there is always strenuous 
opposition, and even serious conflict, from many hon- 
orable and devout persons who conscientiously and 
tenaciously hold to the things and conditions that are 
and look upon any change as revolutionary, mischiev- 
ous, and even ruinous. Reconstruction that involves 
the church has to meet not only the deeply grounded 
convictions and prejudices of the people, but also the 
vigorous protests and frequently open hostility of 
strongly entrenched and widely dominant ecclesiasti- 
cism. Recognition of this fact will lead to discretion 
in the inauguration of new movements, to generous 
sympathy in dealing with the people and institutions 



COOPERATION AND FEDERATION 225 

to be affected, and to a genuinely educational process 
with sufficient time allowed to make seeming icono- 
clasm impossible and the normally new conditions a 
certainty. The leaders of the churches in America to- 
day are called upon by the conditions of divided Chris- 
tendom to undertake with courage and caution a great 
program of reconstruction that has for its objective the 
unifying and effectualizing of the Christian forces of 
this nation in city, town, and country, so that the church 
may have its rightful place in the leadership of all 
phases of national life and in the religious development 
of a great people whose Christian responsibilities are 
commensurate with the greatest of religious oppor- 
tunities, and whose obligations are world-wide. 

In no place does the church need greater strengthen- 
ing than in the rural sections, where divisions are most 
pronounced, where neglect is most common, and 
where its leadership is most essential not only to re- 
ligious life, but to every effort at social, intellectual, 
moral, and even industrial betterment. The rural 
church to-day is being called upon for a service which 
in its present state it cannot possibly render. It has 
not the spiritual vigor, the missionary outlook, the 
religious convictions, nor the intellectual qualifications 
for making it a mighty force in community direction 
and uplift, social, mental, and moral. It cannot com- 
mand its environment nor grip the forces that control 
in rural progress. 

For this there may be many reasons, but unques- 
tionably one of the chief causes of its weakness and 
one of the greatest hindrances to the religious prog- 



226 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

ress of man}' rural communities is the ever-existing 
assertive and exclusive denominationalism. Denom- 
inationalism grips the church and religious life of the 
rural people as a vise and asserts its authority as a 
despot. It is no new power. It came with the blood 
of the fathers and has grown in the very mental and 
moral fibers of the people. It has rooted itself in the 
conscience of the best men and women and even dom- 
inate- the prejudices of the worst. The hard con- 
flicts of the fathers of a century ago over the tenets 
of the various sect< may have passed to oblivion in 
the t< >wns and cities, but not so in many sections of 
the country. The battle no longer wages in fury, but 
the lines are still intrenched and the suggestion of a 
demobilization would be treated with gross indiffer- 
ence if not with open contempt. This stubborn con- 
dition cannot be ignored in any program of reconstruc- 
tion. It must be faced and judiciously and religiously 
met if any success is to be hoped for. 

The past value and present merit of denomination- 
alism must be recognized and appreciated. Denom- 
inations are the direct and inevitable outcome of re- 
ligious liberty. The middle section of the North 
American continent was the providential meeting- 
place of the various sects who left their respective 
European birthplaces to seek a new land where con- 
science might be free and religious thought and wor- 
ship might be untrammeled. The superiority of 
American Christianity, whether Protestant or Roman, 
is due in no small measure to the very conditions that 
have produced a self-respecting and self-assertive de- 



COOPERATION AND FEDERATION 227 

nominationalism. Denominationalism is not to be de- 
spised because of the narrowness, arrogance, and self- 
sufficiency of some boastful sect, or belated and lim- 
ited class. It must be judged in the light of history 
and valued by its present force in giving to the world 
the light, truth, and power of the gospel through its 
representatives and the institutions which it produces. 
Denominationalism has on the Christian people of 
America a righteous hold that must be respected. In 
the course of time its devotion may be transferred to 
a larger and more comprehensive unit, but it should 
never be destroyed. 

Men who are ambitious to bring in a new era for 
the farmers' church must take into account not only 
the need of a united Christianity and a unified church 
life in the country, but also the existing assertive and 
exclusive denominationalism in many communities, the 
larger, fuller, finer, and forceful denominationalism 
of American church life, and the great ecclesiastical 
activities of these denominations to maintain and pro- 
mote their own standing in the religious world. Sen- 
timent may dictate an action which self-interest, and 
that not wholly unrighteous, may oppose. What is 
the way through this labyrinth of church interests, 
with their historical and holy foundations ? The pres- 
ent state cannot continue if rural progress is made 
possible. 

The time has come when denominational coopera- 
tion in rural church life is practically essential to 
any great social and religious movement. The place 
to begin, however, it would seem, would not be in 



228 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

the local community but in the denominational coun- 
cils of those organizations that are directly involved. 
An attitude of fraternity, a sense of respect, a spirit 
of cooperation must be developed in the governing 
bodies and administrative agencies of the denomina- 
tions before local cooperation and federation are pos- 
sible. Some denominations have an exalted opinion 
of their providential and predestined importance and 
are not inclined to cooperation of any kind. They 
claim to be the Lord's peculiar people — and they are. 
Where such a denomination asserts itself in a com- 
munity, federation is impossible and even religious 
harmony is rare. Denominational conceit seldom 
lends itself to the promotion of other than self- 
interests, however large or small the sphere in which 
it operates. The peace program of denominational 
comity and mutual respect must be carried out in 
every section before any great plans of cooperation 
can be entered upon. This will not be accomplished 
by the instantaneous process. It will require the long- 
time exposure, like the photographing of slowly mov- 
ing stars. 

Federation may be regarded by some persons with 
suspicion because it is a term implying compact, united 
government, headship, and a measure of control; but 
that suspicion may be dispelled by proper interpreta- 
tion of the term. The Federated Church can scarcely 
be less than an independent union church and does 
not recommend itself to churchmen who are accus- 
tomed to connectionalism. Such a combination lacks 
vital relations. It is a convenience, and as such it 



COOPERATION AND FEDERATION 229 

seldom inspires devotion, loyalty, and religious pur- 
pose. The finer and stronger virtues of the Christian 
life are, as a rule, not developed in such a church. 
The world moves in systems and in them man finds 
himself. The breaking down of denominations is no 
more to be sought in the rural districts than in the 
towns and cities. The cooperation of denominations, 
however, is not only merely desirable and feasible; it 
is now absolutely essential to any adequate religious 
life and service. Where more than one denomination 
is found in a community, the ministers who serve them 
should agree upon a common program which they will 
seek to carry out. No minister has a moral right to 
preach a sermon in such a way as to give offense to 
persons holding different doctrines, or so to express 
his beliefs that such persons are offended. He may 
teach his own doctrines when he feels impelled to it, 
but in doing so he may not decry and combat the 
views of others of his congregation who look to him 
for spiritual guidance and leadership, and thereby 
create an abiding disturbance in the community life. 
As a Methodist I make bold to say that a Methodist 
preacher who cannot preach from Sabbath to Sabbath 
to Baptists and not give offense, even when he pro- 
claims Methodist views, has no business in the min- 
istry. The narrow, offensive sectarian and the de- 
nominational bully can no longer represent Christianity 
in this country, whatever their church affiliations. Co- 
operation will at once rid all communities of such in- 
tolerant men. 

Cooperation in its local application is best developed 



230 THE CHURCH AXD COUNTRY LIFE 

by an association or federation of churches which has 
for its purpose the establishment and promotion of 
social fellowship among the ministers and other 
church leaders, and the agreement upon a county and 
D immunity program of religious activity and social 
service. Every county in the nation, excepting the 
cities, should have such an association or federation, 
and every minister laboring in a county should wel- 
come the opportunity of cooperative effort which the 
federation would insure. When a new minister comes 
t< i a county, he should seek the association at once or 
be sought by it. Ministers of whatever faith and 
order laboring in the same county should not be al- 
lowed to remain strangers to each other. Harassing 
denominationalism is due in no small measure to a 
lack of esprit de corps among the various ministers 
and of a program of community service which will 
demand for its execution the concerted action of all 
religious people. 

Federation will help to Christianize rural denom- 
inationalism and give ecclesiasticism a sense of neigh- 
borly obligation. It will reveal to the intense sec- 
tarian the beauty and force of genuine Christian 
unity. It will clear away dividing walls, make plain 
the common task, and give Christian honor and broth- 
erly love a chance to develop in rural communities the 
sacred things and purposes of life and genuine re- 
ligion. Federation, or rather cooperation, will not 
only banish strife and unite the Christian forces, but 
it will bring to light and correct religious neglect and 
operate to promote a real cultivation of Christian vir- 



COOPERATION AND FEDERATION 231 

tues and experience. Denominational independence, 
or individualism, is responsible for a large measure 
of the rural neglect of to-day. It is this that has 
divided the Christian people into feeble bands and 
made the support of competent ministers an impossi- 
bility. A consolidated Christianity is indispensable to 
the churches in the open country if they are to pro- 
mote rural progress and furnish leadership in the 
highest interests of country life. This consolidation 
will be possible only when the emphasis is transferred 
from denominational success to the religious develop- 
ment of all the people, when the program of the coun- 
try church shall be large enough to include all neces- 
sary community service, and when the gospel preached 
by all ministers shall bring life and immortality to 
light and usher in the kingdom of God wherein dwell- 
eth righteousness. The moral and religious needs of 
thousands of rural communities in our great country 
furnish unmistakable evidence of the futility of de- 
nominations operating individually and alone and 
without regard to others; and they cry out against 
further postponement of great cooperative efforts on 
the part of the churches that will respect the religious 
beliefs of all and neglect the social, moral, and re- 
ligious needs of none. 



232 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

LAND TENURE AND THE RURAL 
CHURCH 

Henry Wallace 

The prosperity of the rural church has in all ages 
and in all countries been determined largely by the 
tenure by which farmers hold their lands. A pros- 
perous country church means a relatively large rural 
population — large enough to support a minister, to 
push the work of the church vigorously, to impress its 
ideals of life and character on the community, and to 
do its part in extending the gospel to outside sections 
and to foreign lands. 

It requires, second, that farming be on an economic 
basis; that is, that farmers are making money. For 
the church is always and everywhere supported, not 
by capital, but by profits; and if the farmer is not 
making a comfortable living or is sinking his capital, 
he does not have the means of supporting the church. 
And if he does not have the means, his will to support 
the church will be ineffective. 

In the third place, the prosperous rural church re- 
quires a reasonably stable population. So much of 
the Christian life lies in Christian relations with neigh- 
bors, with employees, with employers, with the whole 
community life, that a roving farm population cannot, 
even if it would, develop Christian graces or impress 
itself favorably on a community of unbelievers. The 
farm owner who has moved to town and is renting 
his land cannot be expected to be a real, vital force in 



LAND TENURE AND RURAL CHURCH 233 

the rural church. Nor can the tenant who has a one- 
year lease, or whose tenure is uncertain, be expected 
to cultivate the Christian graces by intimate fellow- 
ship with his neighbors and associates or fellow church- 
members; in other words, to take root in the com- 
munity and become a part of it. 

One thing more. The prosperous country church 
requires that there be an agreement among the mem- 
bers as to the big things for which the church stands : 
the sinfulness of men; the possibility of redemption 
from sinfulness; growth in Christian graces; the ef- 
ficiency of the gospel to make better husbands, better 
wives, better parents, better children, better farmers, 
better business men, better neighbors, better citizens. 
Success need not be expected if minor things of which 
Jesus said nothing and upon which the apostles laid 
no emphasis, such as forms of church government and 
modes of baptism, are regarded as the essential things 
for which the church stands. If the church is to be 
successful, there must be toward these matters a body 
of sentiment which makes hearty cooperation and 
Christian fellowship possible. 

These, as I see it, are the conditions of the pros- 
perous rural church. These conditions prevailed 
when the rural church was in the height of its pros- 
perity in the early part of the last century. There 
was then a dense population per square mile in the 
settled portions of the country, because the farmer 
was then a child of the woods, hewing his way pain- 
fully through the forests of the Eastern and Middle 
States, and requiring a lifetime to clear up a quarter 



234 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

section or even an eighty. He was a man of the ax 
and cradle and scythe and flail. Rural congregations 
were large then; and the spirit of the farmer of that 
day is reflected in the names that he gave to his church, 
— names fragrant of the spirit of piety and devotion 
and showing close acquaintance with the Bible, — 
Bethel, Rehoboth, Mount Zion, Ebenezer. 

There was then n<> pull to the city, for the cities 
were small, as they must needs be, since there was not 
the wherewithal t<> feed a large city population, nor 
adequate means of transportation. Labor was cheap, 
land was cheap, living was cheap; and the farm was 
mainly a means of supporting a large family cheaply. 
There were no landlords, no tenants. While no one 
was getting rich, all but the incompetent were getting 
ahead, and the minister was the outstanding big man 
in the c« immunity — " guide, philosopher, and friend " 
to all, a consoler in sickness or sorrow, an adviser in 
trouble. There was unity as to the great doctrines 
of Christianity. Not that all were agreed; but the 
various nationalities, with their forms of worship and 
religious thought and customs, grouped themselves to- 
gether in localities — the Pennsylvania Dutch here, the 
Scotch and Scotch-Irish there, the Quakers elsewhere, 
the Yankees in other groups. 

All this changed when the farmer emerged from 
the woods and drew long furrows in the rich, fertile 
soil of the prairies; and still greater was the change 
when, at the close of the war, the government gave 
one hundred and sixty acres of land at the cost of 
surveying ($1.25 an acre) to any landless man in the 



LAND TENURE AND RURAL CHURCH 235 

wide world who wanted it and who would become 
a citizen of the United States. 

Then began the rush for these cheap lands, a rush 
from New England, from the Middle States, from the 
South, and from Europe. The farming population 
began a game of leap-frog. The church organizations, 
awake to the importance of securing a foothold in this 
new land, pushed their missionary enterprises, aiming 
to occupy strategic points. These missionary opera- 
tions were not for the conversion of the unsaved or 
of the stranger; they resulted in the transfer of 
church-members from the older countries to the new 
and in grouping them together in the choicest por- 
tions of this newly opened paradise. The result was 
a mingling together of men who, while they agreed 
on fundamentals, gave special importance to distinc- 
tives; and a still further result was the overchurching 
of the entire prairie country. 

Then the rural church began to decline; for the 
introduction of railroads and of farm machinery and 
a far greater use of horse power decreased rural popu- 
lation per square mile. It has constantly been decreas- 
ing ever since from purely economic causes. Still the 
rural church did fairly well, although gradually de- 
clining in the size and number of congregations, until 
the last thirty years, when another set of economic 
conditions began to render it less efficient. 

When thoughtful men began to see that there was 
no more choice land to be given away ; when the great 
growth of city population not merely in the United 
States but in the Old World (the result of cheap food 



236 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

furnished by the farmers of the United States at less 
than the cost of growing it) began to bring the price 
of grain up to the cost of production and above it, land 
began to advance. In the corn belt, the wheat belt, 
and the fruit belt land has increased at the rate of 
about ten per cent, per annum. 

The country church then began to decline more rap- 
idly. Farmers began to rent their farms and move to 
town. Capitalists began to invest in lands as soon as 
the net income would equal the interest on savings, 
and speculators began to buy land far in advance of 
Its productive value, on the assumption that this ten 
per cent, per annum increase in price would continue. 
One result of this was an enormous increase in ten- 
ancy, until about thirty-seven and one half per cent, 
of the tillable lands of the United States was farmed 
by tenants. In the corn belt from forty to fifty per 
cent, of the land is farmed by tenants, and in the 
cotton belt from fifty to seventy per cent. 

Meanwhile the use of improved machinery and of 
horse power instead of man power tended to increase 
the size of farms and to decrease the population per 
square mile. A recent investigation by the Iowa Agri- 
cultural Department shows that, while the increase in 
the size of farms that are farmed by their owners is 
less than four per cent., the increase in the size of those 
farmed by tenants is sixteen per cent. It shows fur- 
ther that in sections in which land is bought for specu- 
lation tenancy has increased very rapidly. We have 
three main classes of landlords : retired farmers, 
capitalists, and speculators, or speculating capitalists; 



LAND TENURE AND RURAL CHURCH 237 

and the lands of all these classes are necessarily 
farmed by tenants. 

Inasmuch as we have not yet really begun to farm 
in the West, but are simply mining our soil and selling 
its fertility (at present at a profit), the tenure of the 
tenant is mainly for one year; this condition makes 
about forty-five per cent, of the population of the 
open country in Iowa more or less unstable. The 
tenant who goes into a new community for a year does 
not usually aline himself with a church unless he is a 
man of very positive religious convictions. Neither 
does the church look upon the tenant as anything 
more than a pilgrim and a stranger, and hence it is 
apt to think it not worth while to gather him into the 
fold. 

Another influence is powerfully effective. Mem- 
bers of churches who bought land, especially in the 
corn belt, at from $25 to $50 an acre thirty years ago, 
could not resist the temptation to harvest the un- 
earned increment and invest it in the newer lands of 
the spring wheat belt, or the plains, or the Northwest. 
They moved to the new country, taking their families 
with them. This has decreased the financial ability 
of the congregation of the country church, has reduced 
the salary of the minister to the starvation point, or 
has perhaps compelled the congregation to have preach- 
ing for but one half or one third of the time, and, in 
certain sections, for only one fourth of the time. This 
deprives the community of the pastoral labor and the 
example of a Christian leader and his family; and 
the result is that the church declines and then dies. 



2 3 8 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

In fact, the churches in the towns of the corn belt are 
largely built up by the removal of members of country 
churches to the towns. 

The farms are becoming larger, and the population 
of the rural community smaller and more unstable 
because of tenantry. The population remaining is 
divided up into various denominations and sects 
through difference of opinion about church govern- 
ment and baptism and other things, the inheritance of 
a past generation, but of which Christ said little or 
n< 'thing and on which the example of the apostles 
differs. 

There are two remedies for this condition, one in- 
dustrial and the other spiritual. Neither is capable 
of instant application, but each is certainly applicable 
in the somewhat distant future. The first is such a 
system of leasing as will make the tenant a reasonably 
permanent citizen in the community, — in other words, 
longer leases. There is nothing permanent in this 
world, for as the poet has said : 

" Pale death treads with equal foot 
The palace of the rich 
And the hovels of the poor." 

So he " treads with equal foot " in our day the home 
of the landlord and the home of the tenant. 

Tenancy is not in itself an evil, but uncertainty of 
tenure and short leases are evils that vex humanity. 
We cannot expect to see a prosperous rural church 
until the tenant can make some arrangement with his 
landlord by which he can stay on the same farm in- 
definitely, take root in the community, become an ac- 



LAND TENURE AND RURAL CHURCH 239 

tive member of the church, and make of his children 
real members of the Sunday-school and rural school. 

Economic causes themselves will force upon the 
landowner this system of longer leases. The constant 
decrease of soil fertility through the bad farming of 
the short-lease tenant and the fact now becoming evi- 
dent that it is more profitable to the enterprising 
farmer to rent land than to own it, must work for the 
greater permanency of the tenant. The first will wipe 
out speculation and reduce land values in the richer 
sections until it will be possible for the tenant by rent- 
ing land to become the owner of the land. This will 
give us a stable population and greatly increase the 
efficiency of the rural church. 

The second remedy is in the change of view of the 
Christian ideal. In the pioneer days the ideal of Chris- 
tianity was the salvation of the individual soul. 
Those were the days of the circuit-riders, of pro- 
tracted meetings and basket meetings, and sometimes 
of hypnotic influence which passed for the work of 
the Spirit. 

As the country became settled and the farmer 
ceased to be a nomad, the ideal of Christianity was 
that of the Christian family. Large families were to 
be reared cheaply on low-priced land owned by the 
farmer himself; they were to be baptized, catechized, 
and pastorally visited, all in the expectation that when 
they came to years of maturity they would take upon 
themselves the vows of the parents. If infant baptism 
was not practiced, it was thought that the growing 
children would become members of the church through 



2 4 o THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

immersion. In those days the church was an aggre- 
gation of these families, and the minister was ex- 
pected to voice the doctrinal convictions of the mem- 
bers, lie was not expected to pay much attention to 
community salvation. 

We must now get back to the original Christian 
idea: that salvation is for every man and for every 
part of the man — body, soul, and spirit; that it involves 
loving " thy neighbor as thyself," and cooperation in 
every good work instead of competition. When the 
rural church gets a firm hold of this idea and insists 
on the great essentials of Christianity — free salvation 
to all who will accept it, temperance, righteousness, 
judgment to come, — people who have the love of God 
in their hearts will be drawn together, and they will 
forget about the differences that have separated them 
and rendered them inefficient 

I have great hope of the union of churches; for 
churches do not believe in their distinctive principles 
sufficiently to carry them to their logical conclusion. 
And the life of the church is not after all in the things 
upon which churches differ, but in those on which they 
agree. When it comes to these, Ephraim will no 
longer covet Judah nor Judah vex Ephraim, but com- 
bining their forces, they will advance on the Philis- 
tines and win the unbelievers. 

As it is now, not fifty per cent, of the people living 
in the open country attend church with any degree of 
regularity. Why should they, unless religion is so 
taught that it bears upon their farming, upon their 
trading, upon their home life, upon their recreations? 



LAND TENURE AND RURAL CHURCH 241 

Really, it is not worth while for the churches to 
spend money to propagate what are known as their 
distinctive principles. One sort of church government 
works out practically about the same as all the rest, 
and none of them have any Scriptural warrant. The 
ethical code, the real spiritual life of the churches, is 
much the same in all its branches, including the 
Catholic. 

The thing for the church to do is to get a vision 
e of the gospel that fits like a self -grown garment or 
covering to every part of life. A reasonably perma- 
nent tenure of lands by ownership or by lease will do 
much to advance the kingdom of God; but the great 
push will come from a higher ideal of Christianity and 
the Christian life. This will draw or pull those who 
are really hungry and who feel in their bitter mo- 
ments that no man careth for their souls. 

Even though the rural church should make great 
advance, it will not have the large congregations of 
fifty or seventy-five or a hundred years ago because 
the people are not there. Farming will be more pro- 
ductive than ever before when we really learn how to 
farm; and the church will then be on an economic 
basis. The wiping out of divisions over things that 
really do not matter will unify the sentiment not 
merely of the churches but of the people who have not 
heretofore united themselves with the church. A re- 
ligion that appeals both to the intellect and the emo- 
tions, that can sanctify the sports and recreation of 
the people, will have a powerful drawing influence 
over the farmer. For the farmer is at heart a religious 



242 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

man, whether he belongs to the church or not. He 
resp »nds promptly to every appeal to his better nature. 
He is not interested in " higher criticism M or in theo- 
logical speculation. He is not the least interested in 
negations. He lives too near God for that. A church 
united on the fundamentals, and with a reasonably 
permanent tenure of lands by ownership or lease, will 
enable us in time to build up a civilization on the 
prairies and the cleared timber lands more satisfying 
than that which can be found anywhere else on earth. 



THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF GOOD 
FARMING AND GOOD PREACHING 

George N. Luccock 

The farm problem is not solved by a satisfactory 
return at the market, and the preacher's task is not 
consummated in the praise of pulpit performance. 
Both farmer and preacher are vitally concerned, and 
with tremendous mutual interest, in a great life move- 
ment. At bottom, both men's responsibility is how 
to make the country a better place to live, and better 
people to live there. Good buildings, good fences and 
fields, good soil, good crops, good stock, good mar- 
kets, good roads, and like things are all worth while 
and to be striven after as means to good living among 
good people. 

After all, the big thing in the country, to be reached 



GOOD FARMING AND GOOD PREACHING 243 

there as elsewhere by adapted methods, is just like the 
big objective in the city or wherever men and women 
and boys and girls live. Human nature is the same 
everywhere, and the fundamental good is the common 
need of all. And God has shown us what is good, 
and one who spoke for him put that good into very 
beautiful words. To do justly and to love mercy and 
to walk humbly with God — that is the great community 
ideal. That is good farming and that is good preach- 
ing which combine to produce that ideal. That ideal 
worked out in daily life will make landowner and 
tenant happier in each other, will sweeten the relation 
between those who hire and those who are hired, will 
provide for the poor and the stranger, and tend to 
make all human life the expression of divine life in 
that best of all environments, God's wonderful out- 
of-doors. 

The indispensable inspirational center for such liv- 
ing is the farmer-supported country church. The man 
with the plow and the man with the Book must be 
mated for effective team work. Each must be sensi- 
tive to the mood and method of the other, or friction 
and wasted energy and disheartening results will 
follow. The preacher who uses his country pulpit as 
a practice park for the city game, dreaming, amid 
the fields, of promotion away from them, is the same 
sort of a hinderer to good living in the country as the 
farmer who takes his family in the automobile past the 
cross-roads church to the fashion-filled pews of the 
city church. The net result is a discouraged preacher 
and a discontented neighborhood. No preacher was 



244 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

ever ordained to break his heart and batter out his 
brains on the baeks of empty pews. Farmers who 
neglect their community churches are doing their best 
to depress the value of land by filling country pulpits 
with depressed preachers. 

Of all men the progressive farmer is best furnished 
to appreciate team work. Students of the soil tell 
us that in the beneficence of our Heavenly Father 
vast stores of plant food are already present in the 
bosom of mother earth, ready for the uses of the 
infant plant Certain important elements must be pro- 
vided by the beneficiary of earth's bounty. It has 
been found further that plant growth is limited by 
the I west element in the supply of plant food. Even 
a superabundance of phosphorus and nitrogen will not 
produce their best unless adequately supplemented by 
potash. The lack of one element actually limits the 
efficiency of the other elements present in such abun- 
dance. Y<>u cannot get capacity service from even the 
most vital element of plant food save in combination 
with its proper supplements. The same law of inter- 
dependence governs, in a larger way, the relations be- 
tween the parson and the plow r man. Neither can 
render capacity service to the community except in 
combination with the other. 

So simple a matter as the faithful, loyal attendance 
of the farmer and his family upon the services of the 
community church quickens the preacher to his pulpit 
best. The assurance of that attendance stimulates him 
in the wdiole process of preparing his sermons, glad- 
dens him in all the round of his pastoral work. For 



GOOD FARMING AND GOOD PREACHING 245 

all his hard labor in the study he cannot be one hundred 
per cent, efficient in the pulpit without the support of 
his people, any more than phosphorus can be one hun- 
dred per cent, efficient without the support of sufficient 
companion elements of plant food. I can take you to 
farms all over the country where people have covered 
their land with expensive fertilizer without getting 
commensurate returns for their labor and their sacri- 
fice, because the returns from the things they provided 
are limited by the lack of the things they failed to pro- 
vide. And I can take you to country churches where 
some of the ablest and hardest working of the Mas- 
ter's servants are wearing themselves out in fruitless 
toil because so many of the farmers will not supple- 
ment that great element in community betterment by 
keeping up church attendance. And whether in town 
or city, the man who habitually neglects church atten- 
dance is doing his wicked best to blight the land with 
the curse of a churchless community. 

Turning now to the other part of this team, I wish 
to state clearly that good preaching is equally indis- 
pensable to the most fruitful farming. Without what 
the preacher gives him no farmer can be at his best. 
He also needs heart for his work. For one thing, the 
blue devils seem to have a particular spite toward the 
farmer. Anyhow, he does more complaining about the 
weather than any other citizen in the kingdom of God. 
And like every other mortal he needs to be sharply 
summoned from the sordid. 

The greatest service a preacher can be to a farmer 
is not to teach him how to raise better crops. The 



246 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

preacher ought to inspire the farmers to become so ex- 
pert in their calling that he himself will feel but an 
amateur in their presence. That, I'm saying, is the 
ideal. His contribution to the forces of fruitfulness 
in their common task is different from theirs. Some- 
times men of the soil become so obsessed by the idea 
green manuring that this becomes the panacea for 
all land complaints. And there are times when the 
sick land, if it had a voice, would cry out to the plow- 
man, "For the land's >ake, quit it. I've got all the 
green stuff 1 want. Give me some more potash and a 
whole 1< >t m< >re ph< «ph< >rus." And a situation can very 
easily be imagined in which the precious half hour of 
the pulpit was perverted to a learned argument on soil 
improvement, and the work-weary audience of farmers 
felt like crying right out in meeting, " For goodness' 
sake, pars- >n, quit it. We have all the green stuff now 
that we want without your handing us any more. 
Give us something for mind and heart." 

But while the farmer does not need a preacher to 
tell him h< >w to raise better crops, or teach him better 
farm management, or to be to him the advance agent of 
newer methods, the preacher can and ought to be an 
inspiration to the farmer in all that has to do with 
making him more successful in subduing the earth. 
The preacher ought to make himself intelligent on the 
occupations and ambitions of his people. He ought to 
be in fullest sympathy with them in their tasks 
and problems. He ought to be the first to warm 
up to forward movements and to praise a success- 
ful experiment. He ought to be a man of vision 



GOOD FARMING AND GOOD PREACHING 247 

for his community, seeing clearest and feeling deepest 
where old customs retard progress, and making 
vivid the promise of better things. He, better 
than any other man in the township, should be 
able to inspire the youth of the neighborhood with 
a great and growing love for the land. He himself, 
beyond the power of his sermons, by his mere presence, 
whether in church or in the fields or in the homes or 
on the road, should quicken the enthusiasm of the 
whole community for the chance God gives to them 
there. He must love farming and love farm people 
so deeply and genuinely that when they see him draw 
near they will feel the approach of good cheer. Just 
as the farmer's presence in the pew reacts on the pulpit, 
quickening the preacher to a better sermon, so the 
farmer feeling the optimism of the preacher will both 
plow a straighter furrow and put more heart into his 
task, not because of the man himself, but because of 
a heightened sense of the values of life, unconsciously 
suggested by the man whose calling it is to guide men 
in the walk with God. 

The very calling of the preacher, with the whole 
church program, honored in a community beyond any 
other influence, strengthens the tie that binds the lad 
to the land. No worth-while young fellow ever left 
the country because of its hard work. He left because 
of the feeling that life elsewhere was not easier, but 
better, more worth while, less narrow and choking, 
more free and gladsome. He was driven by a craving 
for something he was not getting in the country. He 
felt life had something he was losing. 



248 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

Here is the preacher's supreme chance to serve the 
fanner. Certainly he will be a leader in all social 
activities, in institutes, in lecture courses, in all com- 
munity betterment m< vements. But back of and under 
and working through all these he will be something 
bigger. He will as a good minister of Jesus Christ 
be interpreting life in terms of the higher good, in 
terms of service, keeping ever before him the mark 
for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus. And he will find that the farmer is his best 
ally, that the very laws of successful soil tillage are 
likewise the laws of the kingdom of God, the laws of 
the spiritual life. 

To the old adage that there is no excellence without 
great labor, modern agriculture has added the realiza- 
tion that there is no excellence without great sacrifice. 
It is indeed quite indispensable that the preacher to 
farm people be able to give his message in terms of 
farm life and experience. But to be able to do that 
spontaneously and helpfully he must first of all see 
nature herself in terms of theology. No one can 
teach theology, or, if you please, preach the gospel, in 
terms of agricultural thinking who is not first fas- 
cinated by the spiritual lessons taught by agriculture 
to his own heart. 

Let me here bear my testimony to the homiletic 
value of a course of reading along the line of scien- 
tific farming. For several years, besides books and 
bulletins, I have read, with keenest interest, a half 
dozen farm papers every week, and to me no line of 
reading has been equally stimulating in pulpit prepara- 



GOOD FARMING AND GOOD PREACHING 249 

tion. Any preacher, in the city or in the country, will 
both know and feel the meaning of his Bible better by 
some initiative into the secrets of the soil. 

And I think the preacher who is a specialist to the 
country church may be and of right ought to be for 
years to come the best read man on agriculture in the 
community. For one thing, he has time to read, time 
when he is not too physically exhausted to enjoy read- 
ing, and he has the trained habit of reading. For 
another thing, this reading is in line with the most 
immediate interests of his people, and it is also directly 
in line with his own high spiritual calling. Such read- 
ing gives him a richer acquaintance with God and 
therefore manifolds his spiritual power. 

For example, one of the commonest newer words in 
the vocabulary of the farm to-day is humus. But 
humus is just agricultural self-denial, the great sacri- 
fice hit in the big game with nature. Humus produces 
a condition in which the soil below is aerated, has a 
chance to breathe, and the life that is there gets its 
liberty. Besides, it sets free certain elements of plant 
food already there, but not hitherto available. Just 
watch a man with a plow turning down his splendid 
clover field and sacrificing tons of valuable hay ! But 
suppose that turning it under results in so much better 
soil condition that he doubles his corn crop ! 

But there you have the heart of the gospel. If ever 
it seemed that the world was losing much by a life 
sacrifice, it was when Jesus Christ was crucified in 
early manhood. But that was love's way of renewing 
the wornout soil of human hearts by the humus of 



2 5 o THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

heaven. What world liberties followed that sacrifice! 
What elements of strength were set free for world 
service, elements oi power already there but not hith- 
erto available. 

When people get held of that gospel, whether in the 
country <>r in the city, life has a new meaning, work 
has a new meaning, harvests have a new value. For 
therein is revealed the greatest of all secrets of sue- 
namely, the wonderful law of conversion of 
values. No man wants to work for nothing, and nature 
t ask any man to work for nothing; but rather 
good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and run- 
ning over, does nature give back to a man's bosom. 
Suppose a man takes hold of a field that never pro- 
duced more than fifteen bushels of wheat per acre 
and makes it yield twenty-five. Of course he is ten 
bushels an acre happier by bin measure. But he has 
a bosom as well as a bin. And by the bosom measure 
he is away ahead of the game. He swells with a 
proper pride. He has surprised the neighbors, and that 
is worth while. He has made good in his venture. 
His sacrifice has justified itself. And there is joy in 
that. But best of all, he has proved the promises of 
nature, and there is thrill there, the birth of a larger 
hope. He had heard the cry of the neglected and mis- 
treated earth, — " Bring ye all the points of efficiency 
in soil management, — a properly prepared seed-bed, 
and a balanced ration of plant food, that there may 
be food in my furrows and prove me now herewith 
if I will not open to you the secrets of the soil and 
grow you a harvest such as your bins shall not be able 



GOOD FARMING AND GOOD PREACHING 251 

to contain it." And because he made good in his ven- 
ture, nature made good in her promises. No trouble 
about keeping that boy on the farm. You could not 
pry him loose. What's happened ? Well, something's 
happened to his bins. They are fuller. But something 
bigger has happened to his bosom. He has a new faith 
in nature. He is willing to trust her. Willing? Nay, 
he finds the good and the glory of life in becoming a 
colaborer with nature. 

That's one lesson. Here's another and a bit deeper. 
One gets another kind of return to his bosom by his 
investment, and learns a little more of the great law of 
the conversion of values. A man sends his boy to 
college and expects value received on a pretty big in- 
vestment. But he does not expect that value to come 
back to his bins or to his bank account. It comes back 
to his bosom, and he has learned how much more 
money is worth than the bank balance shows. And 
no man is a good farmer until he has increased the 
productiveness of the land as he ought to do, and devel- 
oped his marketing efficiency as he ought to do, and in 
addition to all that learned to put the right valuation 
on his dollars. And the farmer who has this higher 
sense of the worth of a dollar, and is not satisfied until 
he has realized its bosom value in the service of his 
fellow man, is the man God meant for the farm. 

How slow we all are to accept progress under the 
law of self-sacrifice! We want to pay little and get 
much. And we keep forever trying to beat down the 
price. Out yonder in the field, the farmer is asking the 
price of a hundred bushels of corn per acre. " Tell 



252 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

me, O field, the price of one hundred bushels of corn 
per acre." And across the face of the field there 
sweeps a rippling smile as it had been the face of an 
angel. For the earth is the Lord's and glows with the 
good-will of God, eager to give bread to the eater and 
seed to the sower. The price? " Just one price to all. 
First the plow and then the harrow and every tool to 
make a pn per seed-bed. Plenty of air by proper 
drainage. Plenty of plant food for the increasing 
needs of the growing grain. And then you must keep 
plowing to kill the weeds, and more important than that 
to conserve my moisture. After every shower, you 
must break up my surface, else the capillary chimneys 
will let the moisture escape, and I'll suffer from thirst 
when the summer drought comes." And then the 
farmer begins to press down the price. ''Can't I," 
he wheedles, u can't I cut out some of those cultiva- 
tions? We shall be awfully busy. Father used to 
quit tending his corn in early July. And can't I get 
along with a little less fertilizer? Times are hard. 
Taxes are terribly high." The old human habit, which 
we call jewing down, but which really antedates Ju- 
daism by several thousand years, asserts itself at every 
demand of nature. What is the result? A reduction 
in the bushels per acre exactly in proportion to beating 
down the price. And a consequent sterner penalty 
comes too, — a relaxed sensitiveness to the value of 
scientific farming, a losing out in the larger game of 
agricultural life. On the other hand the man who 
gives to the earth his best will find the earth giving 
back to him, good measure, pressed down, shaken to- 



GOOD FARMING AND GOOD PREACHING 253 

gether, and running over. But he gets back vastly 
more than just increase in kind. He gets a new heart 
for his work. He gets a new and vaster outlook upon 
his vocation. He gets a new conception of his place 
and chance in the scheme of things. 

Other kinds of sacrifice than those for personal 
profit come with their call. Higher applications of 
the law of conversion of values enter his thoughts. 
He becomes a dreamer of dreams. A man of visions. 
He gets to seeing things for the common good. The 
spirit of service takes hold of his heart. He is coming 
to think in terms of ideals. He is coming to place a 
higher value upon the returns that come back to his 
bosom than upon those that come back to his bins. 
He looks beyond an increased output from his fields 
and from his yards, beyond a better handling of the 
marketing end of his task, beyond his own better house 
and barn and better equipment, and thinks of a better 
schoolhouse, of a better church, of better roads, of a 
more beautiful countryside, of shorter days in the 
fields and longer evenings with the neighbors, of com- 
munity organization not only for its own higher bene- 
fits but for the higher satisfactions afforded in a wider 
service. 

And here it is that the preacher's best and the 
farmer's best are merged into one. For here it is that 
the proper ambition of the one and the proper message 
of the other find their common ground. For just as 
the preacher declares that Christ sacrificing himself 
to rise again in the glory of a fruitful life 
is the hope of the world, so the farmer finds that 



254 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die 
it abideth alone, and that to sacrifice one's personal 
good for the common benefit is to find — not only to 
find that life again but to find it in a better world to 
live it in. 

And thus working together this man of the Field 
and this man of the Book create that best of all com- 
munity assets, an atmosphere of contentment and 
peace, an atmosphere in which one thanks God to have 
been born and for the precious privilege of abiding. 
And for the purpose of maintaining that let the 
preacher count as possibly his highest privilege to go 
from home to home and guide the household devotions 
at the family altar. 

Several wars ago I journeyed toward a peach coun- 
try with the liveliest anticipations of delight. In the 
morning I thought my eyes would be feasting on thou- 
sands of peach-trees in full bloom. But that very 
morning there came a killing frost, and every opening 
bud. betrayed into bloom by the false promise of 
spring, was caught in the embrace of death. Far more 
tender and sensitive to the chill of a frigid atmosphere 
than the delicate bloom of peach-trees is the heart of 
a child, opening to the will of God. What if the 
warmth and glow of natural affection be only as the 
false promise of spring, summoning the dormant life 
of undeveloped mind and heart into the bloom of self- 
consciousness, of intelligent inquiry as to life's values, 
and when the awakened heart of the child turns with 
glad choice toward Christ, the Sun of righteousness, 
the atmosphere of the home, instead of being warm 



GOOD FARMING AND GOOD PREACHING 255 

and fostering, is toward the eager impulses of the 
child like the dreadful coming of a frost that kills ! 

The great orchardists are finding it practicable to 
prepare against the sudden frosts that often in a night 
destroy the expectation of a year and the fair promise 
of a favoring springtime. They have a system of 
heaters, ready for instant lighting, distributed through 
the orchard and electrically connected with ther- 
mometers among the trees and an alarm mechanism 
in the home, so that when the temperature approaches 
the danger point, the home is aroused and the fires 
lighted; immediately the ascending smoke among the 
trees arrests the descending temperature and the tender 
bloom is saved. By word and life let the preacher 
say to the farmer : " Are not children, your children, 
of more value than many orchards ? " God has placed 
in the home the most delicate, the most sensitive of all 
alarm mechanisms, — a mother's heart. Only let that be 
connected by the electric current of watchful love with 
the family altar, most heavenly of all heaters in the 
home, and the ascending incense from that will be 
potent to stay the descending temperature of a cold 
world above the point of menace to the life of the 
spirit. 



256 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE FEDERAL 
COUNCIL 

Shatter Mathews 

The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in 
America is a body composed of representative officials 
drawn from thirty different Protestant churches or 
denominations, and represents a constituency of some- 
thing like seventeen million church-members. It is 
not seeking to produce organic union among these 
various bodies, but to help each to represent its com- 
mon interest in those great tasks which those who 
believe in Jesus Christ as the divine Lord must face. 
Through its commissions it is engaged in various in- 
vestigative and constructive operations, but it does not 
seek to produce any minimum creed to which all may 
assent. It is not a theological body, but believes that 
the way evangelistic Christians can get together is for 
them to work together. 

The Federal Council represents in a way this grow- 
ing spirit of cooperation which is to be found through- 
out the United States. The problems which Chris- 
tianity faces are both local and national, both those 
of thought and those of action. The Federal Council 
has no panacea for the difficulties which religion must 
face, but it does undertake to express the common 
Christian attitude tow r ard such problems as must be 
faced cooperatively if they are to be answered ef- 
ficiently. 

During the past year the Council has been giving 



FUNCTIONS OF THE FEDERAL COUNCIL 257 

attention to such highly important matters as the ap- 
plication of Christianity to international affairs, the 
problems and future of the rural church, the advance- 
ment of religious education, and the federation of 
various movements which have themselves undertaken 
to unify other movements. We who represent this 
policy are not intoxicated by any theory of centraliza- 
tion. Much less do we undertake to exert authority 
over the bodies who chose our constituent members. 
We do believe, however, that the Christian spirit of 
the United States must find its expression in the spirit 
of social transformation and the evangelizing of the 
forces which are to reconstruct the various communi- 
ties which go to make up our nation. Certain of these 
forces cannot be transformed. They must be de- 
stroyed. The Christian spirit cannot endure the exis- 
tence of vice, much less the agencies which undertake 
to make commercial profit out of vice. In such under- 
takings as these, doctrinal differences play no part. 
Hostility to evil is a fundamental trait of all denomina- 
tions and churches in Christianity. 

But there are other fields into which our Christian 
spirit must move, where destruction is less important 
than transformation. The present crisis in the world 
particularly brings home to us the need of the applica- 
tion of the principles of Jesus to international affairs. 
The great basis on which we stand as Christians im- 
plies the belief that Jesus Christ is to be taken seri- 
ously, that his teachings have application to nations 
as truly as to individuals, that the extent of success 
we have already reached in applying them to economic 



258 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

questions must be duplicated and exceeded in the build- 
ing up of good-will among nations. To give justice 
rather than to fight for rights, — that is the center of 
the ethical teaching of Jesus, and such sacrificial 
social-mindedness must be the aim of nations as well 
as of individuals. That which concerns us as 
churches is not primarily peace, but that attitude of 
mind, those social conditions, those economic policies, 
upon which peace depends. The Christian is not a 
peace-at-any-price man, but he is a righteousness-at- 
any-price man. To bring this into our national life is 
a part of our Christian duty. We wish to keep the 
church abs< >lutely distinct from the state, but we do not 
want to keep Christianity out of our statesmanship. 

The same feeling applies to patriotism. We wish 
to transform patriotism from a belligerent into a co- 
operative virtue. To that end we can see patriotism in 
paying taxes as well as in going to war, and in the 
cooperation of churches as well as in the mobilization 
of armies. Our country communities as well as our 
city communities must receive more attention from 
the earnest Christian spirit. We wish to save individ- 
uals, not merely to rescue them, and we believe that 
the power of Jesus is not limited by geography or 
race. Thus the Federal Council stands not for a new 
ecclesiastical authority, but as an agency of denomina- 
tional cooperation, Christian fellowship, and efficient 
evangelization. 



CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 259 

THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY 
CENTER 

William F. Anderson 

The importance of the rural life movement is at- 
tested by many facts. Probably more than half of 
the population of the country lives in rural communi- 
ties, that is, in towns and villages of twenty-five hun- 
dred people and fewer. That the movement has taken 
a strong grip upon the life of the nation, is apparent 
by the attention which it is receiving from leaders of 
thought and life everywhere. The literature which 
has already developed upon the subject is extensive 
and of high grade. It scarcely seems possible, when 
one considers the widespread interest in the move- 
ment, that the first rural life commission was created 
by the authority of the United States government so 
recently as 1908. 

By common consent the church is the center of the 
community life. The fact is that man's entire life 
centers in the religious ideal. The providential ar- 
rangement of affairs places a primal emphasis upon 
religion and its relation to the other phases of human 
life. The incarnation of God in the person of Jesus 
Christ is the central fact of history. All time preced- 
ing it was simply a preparation for it; all time subse- 
quent to it has been given for the development of the 
significance of the fact, for the development of the life, 
customs, and institutions of mankind. 

If the church is to be the center of the community 



260 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

life, it must get the right conception as to its mission. 
The church is not an end within itself, but a means 
t< ward an end. It would not be strange if there should 
be those who advance the objection that this is an un- 
worthy appraisal of the church's standing. I would 
remind such of that profound basic principle of human 
life, stated in the words of our Lord, regarding the 
significance of the life of the individual: " He that 
would save his life must lose it; and he that loseth his 
life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall find 
it." If it be true of the life of the individual that he 
must attain his highest spiritual significance by the 
gift of his life in service to his fellow men, I hold that 
it is equally true of that aggregation of individuals 
known as the church. The church must lose its life 
in service to the community; and the church that gives 
itself to this ideal of life is the church of the future, 
by whatsoever name it may be known ecclesiastically. 
Now the question may arise as to whether the 
church, if it fills this ideal, may not lose touch with 
the broader world movements of denominational life. 
Such an objection has sometimes been urged. Cer- 
tainly it is not necessary, in strong communities, that 
such should be the case. Such a church, for instance, 
as the Epworth Memorial Church in Cleveland has 
found its interest in the world movements intensified 
by a more direct application of its activities to the 
needs of the community. The objection undoubtedly 
is more valid in the weaker communities; and I see 
but one solution of the problem in these weaker com- 
munities, namely, that the church which predominates 



CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY CENTER 261 

in strength shall have right of way; and that thus it 
may develop not only a local strength, but have suf- 
ficient vitality also to keep up its interest in world-wide 
missionary movements. 

A survey of the situation in the state of Ohio has 
brought to light some rather startling facts. For ex- 
ample, a large number of townships in the rural parts 
of the state are almost entirely destitute of provision 
for the religious life of the community. There rests 
upon the leaders of the different denominations in this 
situation a perfectly tremendous responsibility. The 
principle which should guide us all in the administra- 
tion of the affairs of our respective denominations is 
not a narrow sectarian policy which obtained in the 
past but the interests of the kingdom of God. The 
kingdom of God is the really big thing which must 
by all effort be conserved. That we have our de- 
nominational affiliations and loyalties is of course to 
be expected ; but the man who places .a sectarian, de- 
nominational ideal before the interests of the Kingdom 
is not abreast of the larger redemptive movements of 
the day. 

The several Annual Conferences of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church in the state of Ohio have already, by 
formal action, voted to cooperate with our sister de- 
nominations in this regard. And indeed the leaders of 
the respective denominations in certain communities 
have already been cooperating in the interests of the 
larger Kingdom by a policy of mutual consideration 
and yielding. 



262 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

THE RURAL CHURCH AS A VITALIZING 

AGENT 

Woodrow Wilson 

I want first to express my very deep gratitude to 
you for the cordial manner in which you have greeted 
me, and my sense of privilege in standing here before 
you to speak about some of the things in which we 
are mutually interested. You, gentlemen, are perhaps 
more interested in those matters of policy which affect 
the business vi the country than in any others; and yet 
it has never seemed to me possible to separate the 
business of a country from its essential spirit and the 
life of its people. The mistake that some men have 
made has been in supp sing that business was one thing 
and life another; whereas, they are inseparable in their 
principles and in their expression. 

I must say that in looking back upon the past there 
is something about the history of business in this 
country which is not wholly satisfactory. It is inter- 
esting to remember that in the early years of the 
republic we felt ourselves more a part of the general 
world than we have felt since then. There is no real 
antithesis; a man lives as he believes he ought to live, 
or as he believes that it is of advantage to live. He 
lives upon a doctrine, upon a principle, upon an idea, — 
sometimes a very low principle, sometimes a very ex- 
alted principle. 

I used to be told when I was a youth that some of 
the old causalities reduced all sin to egotism. And I 



RURAL CHURCH AS VITALIZING AGENT 263 

have thought as I have watched the career of some 
individuals that the analysis had some vital point to it. 

An egotist is a man who has got the whole per- 
spective of life wrong. He conceives of himself as 
the center of affairs; he conceives of himself as the 
center of affairs even as affects the providence of God. 
He has not related himself to the great forces which 
dominate him with the rest of us, and therefore has 
set up a little kingdom all his own in which he reigns 
with unhonored sovereignty. 

And so there are some men who set up the principle 
of individual advantage as the principle, the doctrine, 
of their life, and live generally a life that leads to all 
sorts of shipwreck. Whatever our doctrine be, our 
life is conformed to it, but what I want to speak of 
is not the contrast between doctrine and life but the 
translation of doctrine into life. 

After all, Christianity is not important to us because 
it is a body of conceptions regarding man and God, 
but because it is a vital body of conceptions which can 
be translated into life for us; life in this world and 
a life still greater in the next. 

And except as Christianity changes and inspires life 
it has failed of its mission. That is what Christ came 
into the world for, to save our spirits ; and you cannot 
have your spirit altered without having your life 
altered. 

When I think of the rural church, therefore, I 
wonder how far the rural church is vitalizing the lives 
of the community in which it exists. We have had 
a great deal to say recently, and it has been very 



264 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

profitably said, about the school as a social center, by 
which is meant the schoolhouse as a social center; 
about making the house which, in the daytime, is used 
for the children, a place which their parents may use 
in the evenings and at other disengaged times for the 
meetings of the community; where the people are 
privileged to come together and talk about anything 
that is of community interest, and talk about it with 
the utmost freedom. 

Some people have been opposed to it because there 
are some tilings that they do not want talked about. 
Some boards of education have been opposed to it be- 
cause they realized that it might not be well for the 
board of educati< m to be talked about. Talk is a very 
dangerous thing. Community comparisons of views 
are a very dangerous thing to the men who are doing 
the wrong thing. But I, for my part, believe in making 
the school the social center, the place that the com- 
munity can use for any kind of coordinating that it 
wants to do in its life. 

But I believe that where the schoolhouse is inade- 
quate, and even where it is adequate, the most vital 
social center should be the church itself. And that, 
not by way of organizing the church as a social church. 
That is not my topic to-night. That is another topic. 
I speak of the need of making communities realize that 
the congregations, and particularly the pastors, are 
interested in everything that is important for the com- 
munity, and that the members of the church are ready 
to coordinate and the pastor ready to lend his time 
and his energy to the amount of organization which 



RURAL CHURCH AS VITALIZING AGENT 265 

is necessary outside the church as well as in, for the 
benefit of the community. 

It seems to me that the country pastor has an un- 
paralleled opportunity to be a country leader; to make 
everybody realize that he is the representative of 
Christ; to prove himself related to everything human, 
to everything human that has as its object the uplift 
and construction and inspiration of the community for 
the betterment of any of its conditions. If any pastor 
will make it felt throughout the community that this is 
his spirit and this is his interest, and that he is ready 
to draw his elders and his deacons and his vestrymen 
with him as active agents in the betterment of the 
community, the church will begin to have a dominating 
influence in the community such as it has lost for the 
time being and which we must find means to regain. 

For example, one of the things that the department 
of agriculture at Washington is trying to do for the 
farming community is to show the farmers of the 
country the easiest and best methods of cooperation 
with regard to marketing their crops; to teach them 
how to handle their crops in a cooperative fashion, so 
that they can get the best service from the railroads 
and learn how to find the prevailing market prices in 
the accessible markets. Thus they will come to know 
where it will be best and most profitable to send their 
farm products and will draw themselves together into 
cooperative associations with these objects in view. 

The church ought to lend its hand to that. The 
pastor ought to say : " If you want somebody to look 
after this for you, I will give part of my time, and 



266 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

I will find other men in my congregation who will help 
yon without charging von anything for it. We want 
you to realize that this church is interested in the lives 
of the people of this country, and that it will lend itself 
to any legitimate project that advances the life and 
interests of the people of this country." 

Let the rural church find that and then discover, as 
it will discover, that men begin to swing their thoughts 
to those deeper meanings of the church to which we 
wish t<> draw their attention; that this is a spiritual 
brotherhood; that the pastor and his associates are in- 
terested in them, because they are interested in the 
souls of men and the prosperity of men as it lies deep 
in their hearts. There are a great many ways by 
which leadership can be exercised. 

The church has too much depended upon individual 
example. " So let your light shine before men " has 
been taken to be " put your individual self on a can- 
dlestick and shine." Now the trouble is that some 
people cannot find the candlestick, but the greater 
tr< aible is that they are a very poor candle and the light 
is very dim. It does not dispel much of the darkness 
for me individually to sit on the top of a candlestick. 
But if I lend such little contribution of spiritual forces 
as I have to my neighbor and to my comrade and to 
my friend, and we can draw a circle of friends to- 
gether and unite our spiritual forces, then we have 
something more than example. We have cooperation, 
and cooperation, ladies and gentlemen, is the vital 
principle of social life. 

I think I know something about organization. I 



RURAL CHURCH AS VITALIZING AGEXT 267 

can make an organization, but it is one thing to have 
an organization and another thing to fill it with life. 
And then it is a very important matter what sort of 
life to fill it with. If the object of the organization is 
what the object of some business organizations is, and 
the object of many political organizations is, to absorb 
the life of the community and run the community for 
its own benefit, then there is nothing profitable in it. 
But if the object of the organization is to afford a 
mechanism by which the whole community can co- 
operatively use its life, then there is a great deal in it; 
and organization without the spirit of cooperation is 
dead and may be dangerous. So the vital principle is 
cooperation, and organization is secondary. 

I have been a member of one or two churches that 
were admirably organized and were accomplishing 
nothing. You know some people dearly love organ- 
ization. They dearly love to sit in a church and pre- 
side. They pride themselves upon their knowledge of 
parliamentary practice. They love to congregate and 
write minutes. They love to appoint committees. 
They boast of the number of committees that their 
organization has, and they like the power and the 
social influence of distributing their friends among the 
committees. And then, when the committees are 
formed, there is nothing to commit to them. 

This is a nation which loves to go through the mo- 
tion of public meetings whether there is anything par- 
ticularly important to consider or not. It is an inter- 
esting thing to me that the American is actually born 
knowing how to conduct a public meeting. I remember 



268 THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

that when I was a lad I belonged to an organization 
which seemed to be very important, " The Lightfoot 
Baseball Club." Our club-room was an unoccupied 
corner of the loft of my father's barn, the part that 
the hay did not encroach upon. And I distinctly re- 
member how we used to conduct orderly meetings of 
the club in that corner of the loft. I had never seen 
a public meeting, and I do not believe any of the other 
lads with whom I was associated had ever seen a 
public meeting. But we somehow knew how to con- 
duct one. We knew how to make motions and second 
them. We knew that a motion could not have more 
than two amendments offered at the same time, and 
we knew the order in which the amendments had to 
be put, the second amendment before the first. How 
we knew it I do not know. We were born that way, 
I suppose. 

But nothing more important happened with the 
Lightfoot Baseball Club than with some church organ- 
ization meetings, and I remember distinctly that my 
delight and interest was in the meetings, not in what 
they were for. I delighted merely in the sense of 
belonging to an organization and in doing something 
with the organization, it did not very much matter 
what. Some churches are organized in that way. 
They are exceedingly active about nothing. 

Now why not lend that organization instinct, that 
acting instinct, to the real things that are happening in 
the community, whether they have anything to do with 
the church or not ? 

We look back to the time of the early settlement of 



RURAL CHURCH AS VITALIZING AGENT 269 

this country and remember that in New England the 
church and the school were the two sources of life of 
the community. Everything centered in them; every- 
thing emanated from them. The school fed the 
church, and the church ran the community. It some- 
times did not run it very liberally, and I, for my part, 
would not wish to see any church run any community; 
but I do wish to see every church assist the community 
in which it is established to run itself in such a way 
as will show that the spirit of Christianity is the spirit 
of assistance, of counsel, of vitalization, of intensive 
effort in everything that affects the lives of men, 
women, and children. 

So I am hoping that the outcome of this conference 
and all that we say and do about this important matter 
may be to remind the church that it is put into this 
world not only to save the individual soul but to save 
society also. The church must go to work in society 
with a realization of the greater exigency of society 
than that of the individual, because if society is to be 
saved it must be saved in this world, not in the next. 
I hope that our society is not going to exist in the next. 
It needs amendment in several particulars, I venture to 
say, and I hope that the society in the next world will 
be amended in those particulars which I will not men- 
tion. But we have nothing to do with society in the 
next world. We may have something to do with the 
individual soul in the next world by getting it started 
for the next world, but we have nothing to do with 
the organization of society in the next world. 

We have got to save society, so far as it is saved, 



2;o THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

by the instrumentality of Christianity in this world. 
It is a job, therefore, we have got to undertake imme- 
diately and work at all the time. This is the business 
of the church. 

Legislation cannot save society. Legislation cannot 
even rectify society. A law that will work is merely 
the summing up in legislative form of the moral judg- 
ment that the community has already reached. 

Law records show how far society has advanced, 
and there have to be preceding a law instrumentalities 
which advance society up to that point where it is ready 
for record. Try the experiment of enacting a law that 
is the moral judgment of a very small minority of the 
community, and it will not work. Most people will 
not understand it, and if they do understand it, they 
will resent it. But whether they understand it and 
resent it or not, they will not obey it. 

Law is a record of achievement; it is not a process 
of regeneration. Our wills have to be regenerated and 
our purposes rectified before we are in a position to 
enact laws that record those moral achievements; and 
that is the business primarily, it seems to me, of the 
Christian. 

There are a great many arguments about Chris- 
tianity. There are a great many things which we 
freely assert which we can't, in the ordinary scientific 
sense of the word, prove; but there are some things 
which we can show. The proof of Christianity is 
written in the biography of the saints; and by the 
saints I do not mean the technical saints — those whom 
the church or the world have picked out and labeled 



RURAL CHURCH AS VITALIZING AGENT 271 

saints, for they are not very numerous. I do mean 
by the term the people whose lives — whose individual 
lives — have been transformed by Christianity. 

Christianity is the only force in the world that I 
have ever heard of which does actually transform life. 
And the proof of that transformation is to be found 
all over the Christian world, and is multiplied and re- 
peated as Christianity gains fresh territory in the 
heathen world. Men begin suddenly to erect great 
spiritual standards over the little personal standards 
which they heretofore professed and will walk smiling 
to the stake in order that their souls may be true to 
themselves. There really isn't anything else that does 
that. 

There is something that is analogous to it, and that 
is patriotism. Men will go into the fire of battle and 
. freely give their lives for something greater than them- 
selves — their duty to their country. This analogy be- 
tween patriotism and Christianity is a fine one indeed. 
The vitalizing principle of each is the devotion of the 
spirit to something greater and nobler than itself. 

These are transforming influences. All the trans- 
forming influences of the world are unselfish. There 
is not a single selfish force in the world that is not 
touched with sinister power, and the church is the only 
embodiment of the things that are entirely unselfish, 
the principles of self-sacrifice and devotion. Surely 
this is the instrumentality by which rural communities 
may be transformed and led to the things that are 
great; and surely, there is nothing in the rural com- 
munity in which the rural church ought not to be the 



THE CHURCH AND COUNTRY LIFE 

leader and in which it ought not to be the vital actual 
center. 

That is the simple message which I came to utter 
to-night, and as I began by saying that it would proba- 
bly be no message, I repeat that it is no new message; 
I dare say it has been repeatedly said in this confer- 
ence. 1 merely wanted to add my testimony to the 
validity and lire of that conception, because we are in 
the world to do something more than look out for 
ourselves. 

The reason that I am proud to be an American is 
that America was given birth to by such conceptions 
as these; that its object in the world, its only reason 
for existence as a government, was to show men the 
paths of liberty and of mutual serviceability; to lift the 
common man out of the paths, out of the slough of dis- 
couragement, even despair, and set his feet upon firm 
ground; to tell him here is the high road upon which 
he is as much entitled to walk as any that walks; to 
make him realize that here is a free field and no 
favor, and that as his moral qualities and his physical 
powers are, so will his success be. No man shall make 
him afraid, and none shall do him an injustice. 

These are the ideals of America. We have not al- 
ways lived up to them; no community has always lived 
up to them, but we are dignified by the fact that these 
are the things that we live by and swear by. And 
America is great in the world, not as she is a success- 
ful government merely, but as she is a successful em- 
bodiment of a great ideal of unselfish citizenship. 
That is what makes the world feel America draws it 



A LAST WORD 273 

like a lodestone; that is the reason that the ships which 
cross the sea have so many hopeful eyes lifted from 
their humbler quarters toward the shores of the new 
world; that is the reason why men, after they have 
been for a little while in America and go back for a 
visit to the old country, have a new light in their faces, 
the light that is kindled here in the country where they 
have seen some of their hopes fulfilled — the light that 
shines from America. 

God grant that it may always shine, and that in 
many a humble heart in quiet country churches the 
flames may be lighted by which this great light is kept 
alive. 

A LAST WORD 

The statement of Gifford Pinchot, chairman of the 
Commission on the Church and Country Life, conclud- 
ing the conference, was as follows : 

This conference has set the country church problem 
in a new position and has shown that the time is ripe 
for a united, vigorous, and promising effort to give the 
country church the power and influence which right- 
fully belong to it. 

It has proved that the denominations represented in 
the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in Amer- 
ica are ready and eager to work together to give new 
strength to the country church. It has shown the value 
of the Federal Council at a new angle, and it has pro- 
cured for the country church problem a hearing and a 
place that is national in every sense. 



PUBLICATIONS 

OF THE 

jfefceral Council of tbe Gburcbes of Cbrist in Hmerica 



Books 

Christian Unity at Work (4th Edition). The Second Council, of 1912. A 
Record of the Federative Movement for four years. Edited by Charles S. Mac- 
farland, General Secretary of the Federal Council. Price, $1.00; postpaid, $1.20. 

The Federal Council. The Record of the First Council at Philadelphia, 1008. 
Edited by Elias B. Sanford, Honorary Secretary. Price, $1.25; postpaid, $1.50. 

Church Federation. The Story of Inter-Church Federation at Carnegie Hall, 
New York, in 1905; an Initial and Preparatory Session of the Federal Council. 
Edited by Elias B. Sanford. Price, $1.50; postpaid, $1.75. 

Federal Council Yearbook, a Directory of the Federal Council, its constituent 
bodies, and other denominations, interdenominational societies, etc., with 
statistics. Compiled by Henry K. Carroll, Associate Secretary. Paper, 50 
cents, postpaid. 

The Churches of the Federal Council: Their History, Organization and Dis- 
tinctive Characteristics. Ed. by Charles S. Macfarland. $1.00; postpaid, $1.10. 



The Country Church— The Decline of its Influence and the Remedy; the re- 
sult of an investigation, by Charles O. Gill and Gifford Pinchot, of the Com- 
mission on the Church and Country Life. Price, $1.25; postpaid, $1.36. 

The Church and Country Life. Edited by Paul L. Vogt. $1.00. 

A Yearbook of the Church and Social Service. Compiled by Harry F. Ward, 
Associate Secretary of the Social Service Commission. (Paper cover), 30 cents; 
postpaid, 35 cents; (cloth cover), 45 cents; postpaid, 50 cents. 

Spiritual Culture and Social Service (4th Edition). By Charles S. Mac- 
farland. Price, $1.00; postpaid, $1.10. 

A Social Survey for Rural Communities. By G. F. Wells. 10 cents. 

Motion Pictures in Religious and Educational Work, with Practical Sug- 
gestions for Their Use. By Edward M. McConoughey. Price, 10 cents. 



The Fight for Peace, an Aggressive Campaign for American Churches. By 

Sidney L. Gulick, Secretary of the Federal Council Commission on Peace and 
Arbitration. Postpaid (paper cover), 25 cents; (cloth cover), 50 cents. 

Selected Quotations on Peace and War, a Source Book for the use of Sunday- 
school teachers in connection with the Lessons on International Peace, prepared 
by the Federal Council Commission on Christian Education. $1.00; post- 
paid, $1.10. 

The Japanese Problem in the United States, prepared by Prof. H. A. Millis 
for the Commission on Relations with Japan. Illustrated. $1.50; postpaid, $1.60. 

Books Specially Recommended 

The Social Creed of the Churches. By Harry F. Ward. Price, 50 cents; 
postpaid, 55 cents. 

Christian Service and the Modern World. By Charles S. Macfarland. Price, 
75 cents; postpaid, 80 cents. 

The Christian Ministry and the Social Order. Edited by Charles S. Macfar- 
land. Price, $1.25; postpaid, $1.35. 

The Industrial Situation. By Frank Tracy Carlton. Price, 75 cents; post- 
paid, 80 cents. 

The Peace Problem. By Frederick Lynch. Price, 75 cents, postpaid, 80 cents. 



Orders may be sent to: The Book Department of the Federal Council, 105 East 
22d Street, New York City. 



Pamphlets 

Reports: 

Annual Reports for 1915. Postpaid, 20 cents. 

Proceedings of the Second Quadrennial Council of 1912, to accompany the 

volume, Christian Unity at Work. 
Annual Report of The Home Missions Council, 1915. Postpaid, 12 cents. 



Price per 
Hundred 
The Federal Council and the Federative Movement: 

The Federal Council: Its Plan, Purpose, and Work— Bulletin No. 6.. $0.50 

Statement of Principles of the Federal Council— Bulletin No. 7, 50 

Statistics of the Religious Bodies; by Henry K. Carroll 6.00 

A Descriptive Directory of State and Local Federations of Churches, 5.00 

Suggestions for State and Local Federations 2.00 

Kinds and Kindliness of Cooperation; by Alfred Williams Anthony, 1.50 

Model Constitution for a County or City Federation 1.00 

How to Organize a Church Federation, 50 

Commission on Federated Movements: 

Christian Conquests Through Inter-Church Activities 4.00 

Commissions on the Church and Social Service and the Church and Coun- 
try Life: 

What Every Church Should Know About Its Community, 3.00 

Social Service for Young People, S-oo 

Continuous Toil and Continuous Toilers, 2.00 

The Church and Modern Industry, 1.75 

The Church's Appeal in Behalf of Labor 1.00 

A Plan of Social Work for the United Churches, 1.00 

Social Service Catechism, 75 

The South Bethlehem Industrial Investigation, 1.75 

The Muscatine Industrial Investigation, 1.75 

The Church and Industrial Warfare, being a report on the Colorado 

and Michigan Strikes, 5.00 

Reading Lists on Social Questions, 75 

Suggestions for Labor Sunday 1.00 

Labor Sunday Program, 1.00 

The Open Forum; by William Horton Foster, 1.50 

Save Our Soldiers and Sailors 80 

Commission on Peace and Arbitration: Single copies Free. 
The American-Japanese Problem; by Sidney L. Gulick. 
The Churches of Christ in America and International Peace; by 

Charles S. Macfarland. 
Europe's War — America's Warning; by Charles S. Macfarland. 
Report of the Christian Embassy to Japan. 

A Comprehensive Immigration Policy and Program; by Sidney L. Gulick. 
Asia's Appeal to America; by Sidney L. Gulick. 

The Pacific Coast and the New Oriental Policy; by Sidney L. Gulick. 
The Delusion of Militarism; by Charles E. Jefferson. 

Commission on Christian Education: 

Lesson Courses on International Peace and Goodwill for the Churches, 

1915 $5-00 

Outline of Course on International Peace; single copies free. 

Commission on Evangelism: Single copies Free. 
Evangelistic Work in the Churches of America. 
Advance Steps in Evangelism. 
The Commission on Evangelism. 
Call to Prayer for a World-wide Revival. 
Religious Work at the Panama-Pacific Exposition. 

Commission on Temperance: Single copies Free. 

Safety First; Temperance Facts and Thoughts for Temperance Sunday. 

SET OF PAMPHLET LITERATURE, including statistics of religious 
bodies, social service, annual reports, and other literature describing 
the work for the United Churches. For the set, $0.25 



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